Is Zelensky right to say data centre strikes have taken down Russian bots?

What the report says

BBC Verify reports that claims linking Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centres to a major drop in Kremlin-aligned bot activity are not supported by evidence so far. The discussion followed comments from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who suggested that online hate, division and provocations had eased because there were “fewer bots.”

According to the BBC’s reporting, Ukraine has hit three of Yandex’s five data centres since 8 October in response to Russian attacks on Ukrainian internet hubs. One of the strikes disrupted services at Yandex, a major Russian tech company often compared to Google. But researchers and platform data specialists told BBC Verify that this does not show a meaningful reduction in Russian influence operations online.

The report says some of the viral claims appear to rest on a misunderstanding of Cloudflare data. Cloudflare said the charts being shared reflected automated web traffic to sites on its network, not evidence of reduced bot activity on social media platforms. Researchers from dTeam said they had not seen a traffic shift among known Russian bot clusters, and BBC Verify noted that groups previously linked to pro-Kremlin campaigns were still active.

BBC Verify adds that the strikes have clearly disrupted Yandex’s services and could affect websites that rely on its infrastructure, but that is different from proving any change in disinformation activity. Zelensky’s office told BBC Verify he was referring to the general atmosphere on social media rather than a confirmed fall in bot operations.