Fresh investigations have challenged viral claims that Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian technology giant Yandex crippled bot networks supporting Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and Trump’s MAGA movement. Research published on 12–13 October found no comparable collapse in political social media activity, undermining a narrative that spread rapidly following the attacks.
Danish analyst Valdemar Osted of Common Consultancy tested the claim against Facebook data from 76 AfD politicians and 136 MAGA accounts. His team compared comments on new posts with each account’s usual performance, adjusting for posting time, weekday and the age of each post. AfD comment levels ranged from 8 per cent below to 5 per cent above expectations after the strikes, while MAGA accounts performed between 4 and 10 per cent above expectations.
Rather than disappearing, comments on new MAGA posts totalled between 480,000 and 560,000 a day following the attacks, compared with around 370,000 in late September. Osted described the variations as ordinary fluctuations.
Researchers monitoring suspected influence campaigns reached similar conclusions. Richard Schwenn, an analyst at the German think tank Polisphere, told Capital that its tracking of nearly 10,000 accounts on TikTok, Telegram and X—including accounts associated with disinformation, the AfD ecosystem and pro-Russian sources—showed no statistically significant decline. Data collected with the Hasso Plattner Institute showed no comparable reduction in existing bot activity or new bot creation. Josef Holnburger, managing director of the German disinformation research organization CeMAS, likewise reported no related decline in the Russian disinformation campaigns his organization monitors.
Likewise, Poland’s state research institute NASK examined activity on X among accounts monitored for spreading disinformation between 30 September and 11 October. It found no significant overall decline after the Ukrainian strikes, according to findings provided to Interia. Some individual accounts stopped posting, but investigators could not establish any connection to the Yandex strikes.
Kyiv struck three Yandex data centres in Sasovo, Kaluga and the Vladimir region between 8 and 11 October. The facilities support Russian cloud services, businesses and artificial intelligence systems. Outages disrupted Yandex services and dependent websites, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged on Tuesday that the government was discussing the problems and that the company was taking urgent recovery measures.
Reports of a dramatic collapse in Russian bot traffic quickly fuelled claims that the strikes had also crippled Kremlin-linked propaganda networks. Cloudflare recorded automated requests from Yandex’s network falling to just 0.4 per cent of the comparison period’s peak. However, the data measured automated web traffic, primarily search-engine crawlers, rather than propaganda accounts operating on social media. Broader Cloudflare figures showed no comparable collapse in automated activity originating from Russia.
The claims nevertheless spread rapidly, particularly after Czech MEP Tomáš Zdechovský shared a chart suggesting a 56 per cent decline in online activity surrounding the AfD. The graphic provided no identifiable source, methodology or underlying dataset. German fact-checkers also discovered glaring chronological inconsistencies, including figures extending to 15 October, several days after the chart had already circulated online.
Tomáš Zdechovský on X (formerly Twitter): “If confirmed, this is telling: Russian data centres get hit, and online activity around AfD suddenly plummets.
So much talk about German patriotism… then the connection from Russia goes down.
pic.twitter.com/hEPJkIVtA3 / X”
If confirmed, this is telling: Russian data centres get hit, and online activity around AfD suddenly plummets.
Polish military commentator Jarosław Wolski helped spread the claim that AfD-related bot activity had fallen by 56 per cent, while also suggesting an abrupt decline in online MAGA support. On Tuesday, he deleted his post and apologized for disseminating false information, acknowledging that it had reached millions.
Poland’s intelligence services coordinator Tomasz Siemoniak separately claimed that the domestic security agency ABW had observed a radical decline in Russian bot activity. Challenged over the episode, he said he had relied on ABW information rather than the viral graphic.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also suggested on Monday that social media had become less hostile after the strikes, citing fewer bots. Yet Ukraine’s own Center for Countering Disinformation acknowledged on Tuesday that it had no evidence of a major overall reduction in Russian bot-network activity. It reported narrower, temporary disruption to the Pravda, InfoDefense and Nod of Time networks, with posting in some clusters halving for roughly 12 hours before recovering.
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