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.
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.
‘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