Russian bot farms are still trolling, even after Ukraine’s drone strikes on Yandex

Days after Ukrainian military drones took down several Russian data centers, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that the campaign had hurt Russia’s disinformation efforts. “It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social platforms,” Zelenskyy said Monday. “There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations.”

Zelenskyy isn’t the first to assert that the drone operation, which targeted data centers belonging to the Russian technology company Yandex, has cut down on spam and disinformation campaigns fomented by Russian bot farms. Social media users have claimed they’ve noticed less traffic on posts by MAGA-affiliated accounts, as well as those associated with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Some have even said they’ve noticed a steep drop in spam calls and messages.

But these people are wrong. The drone strikes appear to have affected Yandex’s web crawlers, not any disinformation or political operations.

In fact, the account antibot4navalny, which tracks state-sponsored troll farms, reports that bot traffic is steady as ever. On Monday, the same day Zelenskyy claimed that disinformation had died down, antibot4navalny reported that several Kremlin-aligned accounts posted videos falsely claiming that experts are demanding the European Union lift the ongoing sanctions on Russia. Danish analyst Valdemar Osted said interactions on MAGA and AfD accounts have actually increased since the strikes. And the charts purportedly showing a decline in bot activity appear to be AI-generated.

Ironically, claims that the drone strikes hindered Russian disinformation campaigns appears to be a form of disinformation itself, no matter what Zelenskyy says.