Drone Strikes on Russian Data Centers Spark Misleading Bot Traffic Charts

Ukrainian drone strikes have disrupted operations at Yandex, often called Russia's Google, taking multiple data centers offline over the past week. While the attacks have caused real service outages, a chart circulating on social media purporting to show a sharp decline in bot traffic has been misinterpreted as evidence that Russian disinformation networks were crippled, according to reporting by The Verge.

The chart, citing Cloudflare data, actually tracks requests from automated Yandex web crawlers, not social media bots. These crawlers serve various purposes, including indexing websites for search engines and providing customer service support, though they can also be used for malicious activities like hacking and spam. The data is specific to Yandex-based traffic and does not reflect overall bot activity from Russia, which Cloudflare says has remained largely unchanged around the attacks.

This distinction is crucial. Many users inferred that the decline represented a blow to bot farms that spread disinformation, conspiracy theories, and harmful content. However, antibot4navalny, a prominent troll farm exposer, clarified on X that the data has nothing to do with social media.

Separately, other charts have been shared claiming a drop in Russian disinformation bot activity related to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. One such diagram was posted on X by European Parliament member Tomas Zdechovsky, who asserted that online activity around the AfD plummeted after the data center attacks. But computer scientist Raphael Wimmer suspects the image is AI-generated, citing inconsistencies such as a data point dated October 15th, which is in the future. The image appears to have originated from Threads user Robin Schlingheider, and its data source is unestablished; the original does not mention the AfD. Wimmer says Schlingheider has avoided questions about the image's origin, and he urged people to stop sharing unverified images.

Meanwhile, the drone strikes have had a tangible impact on Yandex's services. The vast majority of Yandex-operated systems remain offline, including the Yandex Pay digital payment service. This has left users unable to transfer funds, check balances, or make purchases. Yandex Fintech head Dima Pirogov stated that there is no precise restoration timeline yet, but promised to work until service is restored.

For developers and users relying on Yandex services, the outages underscore the vulnerability of centralized infrastructure to physical attacks. The incident also highlights the importance of verifying data before drawing conclusions, as misinterpreted charts can spread quickly online.

The Verge's reporting clarifies that while the drone strikes have caused genuine disruptions, the viral charts do not support claims of a significant decline in Russian disinformation bot activity. The situation remains fluid, with service restoration timelines uncertain.