Attacks on Russian data centers knocked out its version of Google, but claims that bot activity plummeted were unfounded.
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On October 8, Ukrainian drones destroyed a data center 250 miles outside of Moscow in retaliation for Russian strikes that disrupted Ukrainian internet and television access in late September. Within three days, Ukraine destroyed or disabled two more data centers in the region, crippling the operations of Yandex, Russia’s largest internet technology company.
Mark Sawyer is a reporter for The Dispatch based in Washington, D.C., and the inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellow through The Fund for American Studies. He previously worked as an investigator and open-source intelligence analyst focused on a range of issues including election integrity, national security, and Russia's use of disinformation and the internet to pursue its foreign policy goals. His favorite professional experiences have been serving as an election observer in Ukraine and Moldova. When Mark is not going down rabbit holes for his latest article, you can probably find him experimenting in the kitchen, birdwatching in the city, or convincing his unsuspecting friends to play a complicated board game.