Why Zelenskyy's claims that Ukraine drone attack halted Russian bot traffic don't hold up

When Ukrainian drones hit three data centres owned by Russian technology and AI company Yandex this weekend, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy initially said it resulted in a sudden drop in pro-Russia bot activity on social media. Some experts are casting doubt on his claim, instead suggesting people are misinterpreting data collected after the strikes.

Ukrainian president credited drop in pro-Russia bot activity on social media to strike on Yandex data centres

Mark Gollom · CBC News

· Posted: Oct 14, 2026 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

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When Ukraine struck three data centres owned by the Russian technology and AI company Yandex over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy initially said the attacks had resulted in a sudden drop in pro-Russia bot activity.

"It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms," Zelenskyy told the Warsaw Security Forum Monday via video link. "A lot of people noticed it. There was less hate, less division and fewer provocations. Because there were fewer bots.

"And it's pretty clear where those bots were coming from — if they disappeared when Yandex went offline."

When we started responding to Russia’s operation against our data centers, and when our strikes reached Yandex’s data centers, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms. A lot of people noticed it. There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations. Because there were fewer bots. 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. Most importantly, we need people in America, every morning, when the day in Europe is already moving toward evening, to really see what is happening. To see the truth. From a speech at the Warsaw Security Forum. (3/3)

—ZelenskyyUa

The Ukrainian president's assertions that the strikes had curtailed the spread of pro-Russia disinformation were also repeated and spread on various social media forums. But some experts are casting doubt on his claims and instead suggest that people are misinterpreting data collected about bot traffic following the drone attacks.

'A dangerous misconception'

"It's a dangerous misconception," Lukasz Olejnik, a visiting senior research fellow at the Department of War Studies at Kings College London, posted on X.

"The 'bots went silent' story is misinformation," he wrote. "Believing it is plainly dangerous. It tells people the threat is gone while influence operations keep going."

Yandex, often described as Russia's Google, runs the country's most popular search engine and a wide range of digital services, and is heavily involved in the development of Russian artificial intelligence.

The airstrikes on the data centres caused outages across Yandex's services, leaving users in dozens of Russian cities as well as those in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia, unable to order taxis or access banking services, according to Russian independent news outlet Astra.

In an interview with CBC News, Samuel Woolley, who studies disinformation at the University of Pittsburgh, agreed it was an "an overstatement" to suggest propaganda bot traffic declined following Ukrainian attacks on Russian data centres.

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"I haven't seen any research or data that tracks all of the propaganda bots," he said. "It's a misconception to say that all the Russian propaganda bots went down because of this."

Russia is alleged to have created a vast network or army of bots — automated software programs on the internet — to spread disinformation, particularly about Ukraine and the war.

Flawed interpretation of data

Following the strikes on the data centres, some on social media were quick to cite a chart from Cloudflare, a U.S. company that monitors global internet traffic, claiming that it showed Russian bot activity had dropped to nearly zero.

Olejnik said in an email to CBC News that while the data from Cloudflare is reliable, it just showed a decline in automated traffic activity from Yandex's search engine crawler, which he explained is different from automated bots used to spread disinformation by posting on social media sites.

"The problem is how these figures were interpreted," Olejnik said, noting the Cloudflare data does not measure propaganda infrastructure activity on social networks.

"The strikes disrupted Yandex's infrastructure, but no significant general decline in pro-Kremlin activity is confirmed," he told CBC via email.

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Woolley says most people associate the word "bot" with fake accounts online, however, it's a generic term to describe any kind of software that completes automated tasks on the internet. Including the kind Yandex uses to scour the web.

"So it makes total sense if you attack Yandex, that automated traffic online would go down," he said.

Yandex, often described as Russia’s Google, runs the country’s most popular search engine and a wide range of digital services, and is heavily involved in Russia’s artificial intelligence development. (Anastasia Barashkova/Reuters)

"Basically, bot traffic generally dropped, but everyone is so focused on the internet being so rife with disinformation and propaganda, people relate the word bot to a manipulative social media account."

Woolley says it's estimated that over half of online traffic is automated, but "that doesn't mean that half of online traffic is malicious bots."

He also says it's unlikely that Russian propaganda networks were entirely reliant on the Yandex data centres hit in the strikes.

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Olejnik says Russian influence operations involve thousands of accounts across various platforms, and that "taking down a few data centres" won't solve the whole problem.

"Troll farms hide behind proxies, hijacked devices and Western clouds," he wrote on X. "They're still operating."

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy appeared to be backtracking a bit on his initial claim. The Ukrainian president's office told BBC he was "talking about the atmosphere on social media" rather than a decline in bot activity.

The office noted that it had seen "reports of fewer provocative and hateful comments" from many social media users.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Gollom is a Toronto-based reporter with CBC News. He covers Canadian and U.S. politics and current affairs.