Viral social media posts have claimed there has been a significant drop in Russian influence operations in recent days. President Zelensky suggested on Monday there was "less hate, less division and fewer provocations" online because of "fewer bots".
Ukraine has struck three of Russian tech giant Yandex's five data centres since 8 October, in response to Moscow's attacks on Ukrainian internet hubs. The second of these strikes last week caused Yandex, often described as Russia's Google, to announce it was struggling to maintain its services.
But BBC Verify, which tracks Russian influence operations, reports that claims these attacks have affected disinformation campaigns appear to have come from a misinterpretation of data produced by tech firm Cloudflare. Some social media users have been sharing Cloudflare charts that show bot activity using Yandex's network has declined. However, experts note that while bots are commonly associated with fake social media accounts pushing divisive content, they are also used for legitimate automated tasks such as scanning web pages for search engines. The decline in Yandex network bot traffic does not necessarily equate to a decline in influence operations.
Russian influence operations, which promote pro-Kremlin narratives and spread disinformation, have been tracked by researchers and journalists including BBC Verify for more than a decade. These campaigns push disinformation onto people's social media feeds on issues including the Ukraine war and post messages in support of Moscow's interests.
BBC Verify's investigation found no evidence that the data centre strikes have significantly reduced the bot networks engaged in political disinformation, including accounts posting supportive messages about groups such as the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement in the US and the far-right AfD party in Germany.