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SecurityActive today · day 4

Cloudflare: Ukraine's Yandex strikes didn't disrupt Russian disinformation

Experts debunk viral claims that attacks on Russian data centers silenced bot operations and influence campaigns.

newest coverage 10h agosummary written 12h ago6 pieces8 likes & upvotes6 comments Hacker NewsMastodonGoogle NewsNewswires

What to know

  • A viral story claimed Ukrainian Yandex strikes nearly eliminated Russian disinformation bots, citing a 99% drop in Cloudflare bot traffic; Zelensky amplified the claim at Warsaw Security Forum.
  • Experts and Cloudflare itself clarified that the traffic drop was mainly search engine crawlers and indexing traffic, not social media bot operations.
  • Russian disinformation campaigns use residential proxies, compromised IoT devices, and Western cloud hosting—not Yandex—so the strikes did not disrupt influence operations.
  • The narrative conflated separate incidents (Trump's pressure on diesel strikes and Ukraine's data center targeting) and misinterpreted technical data that people 'saw what they wanted to see' before the U.S. midterms.

The dispute Whether the narrative deserves to be debunked before the election or whether doing so serves a purpose when people enjoy a story about Ukraine outmaneuvering Russian disinformation. · positions read across 2 posts and comments

most voices

The narrative is false: Cloudflare data shows crawlers, not bots; Russian disinformation uses other infrastructure and continues undiminished.

  • “Bot-driven Russian disinformation campaigns against Western democracies, including the United States, continue, undiminished.”

    Machine Society · Hacker News / Machine Society ↗
many voices

The story is appealing but built on misreading technical data—people confused terminology and saw what they wanted to see before the election.

  • “Their motivated reasoning made them see that the internet was cleaner, more friendly, less toxic.”

    Prof. Olga Belogolova · The National UAE ↗

“As someone who investigated and disrupted numerous malign influence operations and troll networks, I can also tell you that they do not often host their infrastructure on Yandex.”

Prof. Olga Belogolova, Johns Hopkins researcher, ex-Meta policy lead · The National UAE ↗

Volodymyr Zelensky Ukrainian PresidentDonald TrumpDonald Trump U.S. PresidentProf. Olga Belogolova Johns Hopkins researcher, former Meta policy leadCloudflare Network infrastructure company

Cloudflare: Ukraine's Yandex strikes didn't disrupt Russian disinformation
The National UAE

How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlesposts

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Oct 13Oct 14yesterdaynow · 7:35 AM ET
  1. 2

    Johns Hopkins expert warns against misinterpreting Cloudflare data

    Prof. Olga Belogolova, director of emerging technologies at Johns Hopkins SAIS and former Meta policy lead on influence operations, posts on LinkedIn that people saw "what they wanted to see" in the Cloudflare data. She distinguishes bots from trolls and notes that Russian influence operations typically don't host infrastructure on Yandex. She cautions that the strikes are "not exactly a precise tool for stopping foreign influence operations."

    “Bots are importantly not trolls... Cloudflare labels any non-browser, automated script as a bot.”
    — Prof. Olga Belogolova
    1. 1 outlet Russian bots and influence operations 'weren't disrupted by Ukraine strikes'

      first by The National UAE, 14h ago

    • pxlnv@mastodon.social

      Evidence Does Not Show Decreased Russian Propaganda After Ukrainian Strikes on Yandex Data Centres https:// pxlnv.com/linklog/diresta-yand ex-strikes/

      pxlnv@mastodon.socialMastodon10h agoview on Mastodon ↗
  2. 2 days quiet
  3. 1

    Cloudflare clarifies bot traffic data; malicious bots migrated

    Cloudflare Radar officially states that bot traffic refers to automated requests like crawlers and scripts, not social media activity. The company posts: "Cloudflare data reveals that while search crawling stopped, malicious bots simply migrated to other networks. There was no evidence that the strikes knocked social media manipulation offline."

    “Cloudflare data reveals that while search crawling stopped, malicious bots simply migrated to other networks.”
    — Cloudflare
    • MikeElgan@mastodon.social

      No, Ukraine strikes didn’t blow up Russian disinformation on social https://www. machinesociety.ai/p/no-ukraine -strikes-didnt-blow-up # MachineSociety

      MikeElgan@mastodon.socialMastodon3d agoview on Mastodon ↗
  4. background

    Tech writer debunks disinformation narrative — Machine Society analysis disputes the viral story, arguing the Cloudflare data shows search engine crawlers, not social media bots, and that Russian disinformation operations use residential proxies, compromised IoT devices, and Western cloud hosting—not Yandex. The analysis finds no link between Trump's pressure and Ukraine's data center targeting.

  5. background

    Viral narrative claims strikes eliminated Russian disinformation bots — Online accounts report that Yandex strikes nearly eliminated Russian disinformation bots. A Cloudflare graph purportedly shows Yandex bot traffic down 99% from the previous week, and X users report seeing far fewer pro-Russian posts. Zelensky states at the Warsaw Security Forum that there were "fewer provocations because there were fewer bots" as a result.

  6. background

    Ukraine strikes three Yandex data centers over four days — Ukraine targets Russian Yandex data centers (the country's largest cloud and search infrastructure provider) in what officials cite as retaliation for Russian strikes on Ukrainian power and data infrastructure.

  7. background

    Trump pressures Zelensky to stop striking Russian refineries — President Trump, concerned that Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian diesel refineries might raise U.S. fuel prices ahead of midterms, tells Zelensky he had "better damn well stop." Trump had previously said "Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing: He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia."

What people are saying 0 voices from 0 sites · best of 2 · verbatim

Still unanswered
  • Did the Yandex strikes have any material impact on Russian military or intelligence operations, even if they didn't silence disinformation bots?
  • Why did so many outlets and commentators amplify the narrative without verifying the technical claims?