Ukraine hits Russian Datacentre causing a 29% drop in US Twitter posts
Ukrainian drone strikes on Yandex data centers disrupted Russian online services and sharply cut Yandex-linked bot traffic.
The London Economic reports that Ukrainian drone strikes hit Yandex data centers in Russia and took major online services offline. Monitors said residents could not use banking apps, complete transactions, or book taxis, while automated traffic from Yandex's network fell to about 0.4% of its recent peak. French researcher David Colon said Storm-1516 false narratives then received only dozens of impressions instead of millions of views. President Zelensky said the strikes reduced bot-driven hate and provocations on social platforms.
- Drone strikes hit several major Yandex data centers inside Russia.
- Banking apps, payments, and online taxi booking were reported disrupted.
- Automated traffic from Yandex's network fell to 0.4% of its recent peak.
- Storm-1516 narratives in France drew far fewer views after the outage.
- Yandex is described as handling more than 70% of Russian search.
Full article630 words · extracted from thelondoneconomic.com · click to collapse
Ukraine’s fight against Russia arguably took one of the most intriguing turns of the entire conflict this weekend, after a co-ordinated drone strike against several major Russian data centres completely decimated Yandex – their Google equivalent which controls more than 70% of search traffic in the country.
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What is Yandex? Ukrainian strikes make major impact in Russia
According to tech experts monitoring the situation, the strikes have successfully taken online services down, leaving large swathes of Russian citizens unable to use banking apps, complete transactions, or even book a taxi online. However, there’s another interesting by-product from this coordinated action.
As per the bot analysts at Tom’s Hardware, bot traffic from the Yandex network has dropped to just 0.4% of the maximum number of HTTP requests recorded in the past two weeks. That means activity from automated, Russian-hosted accounts has been virtually eliminated on social media.
These developments come at a crucial point. Russia has ramped up its attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure in recent weeks, targeting power plants as recently as this weekend. Donald Trump has also seemingly swung towards a pro-Moscow position, after brokering a diesel deal with Vladimir Putin.
Russia based bot traffic plummets, weeks before US midterms
And, what’s more, the Trump Administration is heading into a set of midterm elections where their popularity is tanking, and major losses are expected. And, with X/Twitter traffic accounting for an estimated 21-29% of activity on the US platform, this might have a major impact on how campaign messages are seen.
— Chad Scott (@cpscott16) October 12, 2026Ukraine just hit another Yandex data center inside Russia, and Cloudflare data shows automated traffic coming from Yandex’s network has collapsed to roughly 0.4% of its recent peak.
For some perspective, researchers have previously estimated that bots generated roughly 21–29% of… pic.twitter.com/qOhhwPRORi
Yandex strikes restrict major far-right accounts from reaching viewers
There has already been a strong and significant impact on bot traffic in countries such as France and Germany. David Colon, a French information operations researcher, has noted a huge difference in the performance of narratives generated by the Russia-linked information operations group, Storm-1516.
In a series of Tweets, he has explained how a host of prominent bot-powered accounts – all with a far-right swing – are no longer being amplified on the site, as a direct consequence of the Yandex attacks. Pages which achieve millions of views on a single posts are now struggling to generate a four-figure count.
Voici un nouvel indice de l'impact de la destruction des serveurs Yandex sur les bots russes : le dernier faux-récit du mode opératoire russe Storm1516 ciblant la campagne présidentielle française, publié vendredi 9 octobre, n'a apparemment obtenu que quelques dizaines de… pic.twitter.com/YC8M2cyrZT
— David Colon (@Colon_David) October 12, 2026
Ce compte affilié à Storm1516 a partagé deux faux récits ciblant la France, l'un avant la destruction des serveurs Yandex, l'autre après. A chaque fois, j'ai pris la capture d'écran 3 jours après la publication initiale. Comme vous pouvez le constater, le nombre d'impressions… pic.twitter.com/P1IVWCu5jM
— David Colon (@Colon_David) October 12, 2026
‘It is clear where these bots were coming from’ – Zelensky
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has hailed the tactical strikes, stating that they have resulted in ‘less hate and division’ being stoked online. It’s unclear as to when Yandex will get up and running to full capacity again – and the timing is certainly problematic for Moscow and its sympathisers.
“When our strikes reached Yandex data centers, it suddenly became easier to [use] social media platforms. People noticed there was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations on social media. Because there were fewer bots, it’s pretty clear where those bots were coming from.” | Volodomyr Zelenksy