Ukraine’s attacks on Russian data centers have silenced the pro-Trump and pro-AfD bots on social media

Attacks attributed to Ukraine against data centers in Russia may have reduced the activity of bots connected to Yandex infrastructure by more than 99%, with effects observed on social media in the United States and Europe. The incident occurred on Sunday, amid political tensions ahead of the U.S. congressional elections.

Three major data centers were hit, according to information cited by Le Parisien: first in Sasovo, in the Ryazan region, then in the Kaluga region and, finally, in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow. The infrastructure was used by Yandex, Russia’s leading provider of online and cloud services.

The company announced that the Vladimir data center was damaged in a drone attack and that operations were disrupted. Cloudflare subsequently reported a decline of more than 99% in bot activity originating from Yandex infrastructure compared with the previous week.

Declines in online activity were also observed around conservative groups in Germany and the United Kingdom. In the United States, users noticed fewer pro-conservative and pro-Trump reactions on the X platform, fueling speculation about the role of Russian infrastructure in influence operations. However, there is currently no public evidence that the incident will affect the outcome of the midterm elections scheduled for November 3.