Ukrainian drone strikes on three data centres operated by Yandex, Russia's largest technology company, have coincided with a sharp decline in automated online activity, prompting speculation that the attacks may have disrupted not only the company's services but also Moscow's influence operations abroad.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the issue on Monday at the Warsaw Security Forum, saying that social media platforms had become noticeably less hostile since the strikes. "When we started responding to Russia's operation against our data centres and when our strikes reached Yandex data centres, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms," he said. "A lot of people noticed it, and there was less hate, less division and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots."
Zelenskyy added: "And it's pretty clear where those bots were coming from. If they disappeared when Yandex went offline, this proves again and again that Europe is not the source of the problems. Europe is not the one making everything more difficult."
Three data centres hit
Over the past few days, Ukrainian drones struck Yandex facilities in Sasovo (Ryazan region), the Kaluga region south-west of Moscow, and the Vladimir region east of the capital, where the latest attack was reported on Sunday. The strikes damaged infrastructure and disrupted services. Yandex confirmed that operations at its Vladimir data centre had been suspended, stating on Telegram: "Following a drone attack, the infrastructure of the Vladimir data centre was damaged. Operations at the data centre have been completely suspended. The remaining infrastructure resources are unstable and the platform is down."
According to an analysis of Cloudflare Radar data, automated traffic originating from Yandex's network fell by approximately 94% on Sunday compared with average levels in the second half of September. However, the figures include legitimate automated traffic such as search-engine crawlers, and do not establish whether Kremlin-linked social media bots were affected.
Political reverberations across Europe
The apparent correlation has fuelled debate in Germany, where claims of a sharp decline in online activity surrounding the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) circulated widely, though no independently verified figures have emerged. Czech MEP Tomáš Zdechovský wrote on X: "If confirmed, this is telling: Russian data centres get hit, and online activity around AfD suddenly plummets."
Similar claims emerged in Britain, where online activity associated with Reform UK was reported to have declined. In the United States, social media users reported fewer apparently automated pro-conservative responses on X, the platform owned by Elon Musk. The speculation has drawn attention from prominent figures, including right-wing activist Laura Loomer, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia.
The strikes come amid a broader pattern of Ukrainian attacks on Russian infrastructure, as seen in recent drone operations that have targeted both military and civilian targets. The disruption to Yandex's services also has commercial implications, as the company is a major player in Russia's digital economy, often described as the country's equivalent of Google.
While the exact impact on bot networks remains unverified, the episode has highlighted the extent to which European political discourse may be influenced by automated accounts originating from Russian infrastructure. As Zelenskyy noted, the apparent disappearance of bots when Yandex went offline suggests that the source of much online hostility may lie outside Europe. The full consequences of the strikes, both for Yandex's operations and for the broader information environment, are still unfolding.
