Russian Bot Farms Continue Trolling After Ukraine's Drone Strikes on Yandex

Speaking Monday, Zelenskyy said the campaign had made social media calmer. "It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social platforms," he said. "There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations."

Zelenskyy was not the first to assert that the drone operation, which targeted Yandex data centers, had reduced spam and disinformation campaigns fomented by Russian bot farms. Social media users claimed they noticed less traffic on posts by MAGA-affiliated accounts and accounts associated with the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party. Some said they also noticed a steep drop in spam calls and messages.

But those claims are not supported by the data, according to The Verge. The drone strikes appear to have affected Yandex's web crawlers, not disinformation or political operations.

The account antibot4navalny, which tracks state-sponsored troll farms, reported that bot traffic was steady as ever. On Monday, the same day Zelenskyy said disinformation had died down, antibot4navalny reported that several Kremlin-aligned accounts posted videos falsely claiming that experts are demanding the European Union lift its ongoing sanctions on Russia.

Danish analyst Valdemar Osted said interactions on MAGA and AfD accounts actually increased since the strikes. Charts that purportedly showed a decline in bot activity appear to be AI-generated.

The Verge reported that claims the drone strikes hindered Russian disinformation campaigns appear to be a form of disinformation themselves, regardless of Zelenskyy's statements.