Multiple Ukrainian drone attacks over the past week have taken Russian data centers offline and reportedly caused online bot traffic to plummet, but in reality it’s probably not the type of bot activity most people associate with Russia.
A graph citing data from Cloudflare has been circulating on social media platforms showing a sharp decline in bot traffic following attacks on the servers of Yandex, a technology company often described as “the Google of Russia.” While many people infer that the graphic refers to bot farms that push disinformation, conspiracy theories, and other harmful content on online platforms, reputable troll farm exposer antibot4navalny says the data “has nothing to do with social media.”
In a thread on X, antibot4navalny says that the graph actually measures requests from Yandex’s automated web crawlers. These bots have broad uses, so while can They can be used maliciously to hack user accounts and spam people, they are also very commonly used to index websites for search engines and provide customer service support. The graph is also specific to Yandex-based traffic, and not Russian bot activity in general, which remains largely unchanged around data center attacks, according to Cloudflare.
Other graphs have also been shared showing the same supposed decline in Russian disinformation bot activity. One such diagram was shared on
Computer scientist Raphael Wimmer says he suspects the source diagram shared by Zdechovský is AI-generated, pointing out several inconsistencies with the timeline of activity he’s supposedly tracking, including a data point recorded for a future date: October 15. The image appears to have been first posted by Threads user Robin Schlingheider. The source of the data is not established and the original does not include any reference to the German AfD party. Wimmer says Schlingheider evaded his questions about the image’s origin.
“Could we (and especially politicians, journalists and scientists who should know better) stop sharing unverified images?” Wimmer said.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of systems operated by Yandex still appear to be offline after the latest drone attack, including the digital payment service Yandex Pay, leaving users unable to transfer funds, check balances or make purchases. Yandex Fintech director Dima Pirogov said in a statement (translated via Google) that “we can’t give you a precise restoration timeline yet, but we promise: we won’t stop until service is restored.”
