Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says strikes on Russian data centers have silenced social media bots. Multiple outlets report that after several drone strikes in the past week, automated or bot-like traffic attributed to Russia’s online activity appears to have dropped sharply, with one widely shared figure citing a steep decline in Yandex-related activity.
However, reporting from outlets that analyze the underlying measurements warns that the available data does not clearly distinguish between reduced bot posting and broader service disruption. One cited indicator shows automated traffic on Yandex systems falling dramatically, but this may also reflect outages that prevent both bots and normal users from accessing services. Other explanations and limitations in the data—such as what traffic is being counted and how attribution is made—mean the pattern cannot be taken as definitive proof that bots specifically were “silenced.”
