Experts say Zelenskyy overstated his case after Ukrainian strikes on Yandex data centres failed to dent Russian bot networks

Ukraine hit three of Yandex's five data centres in strikes carried out between 8 and 11 October, and on Monday Zelenskyy claimed social media had grown less hostile due to "fewer bots" being active — yet disinformation researchers say the attacks produced no measurable disruption to Kremlin influence operations. Amil Khan, CEO of disinformation-tracking firm Valent, told experts that his team watches roughly 40 Russian disinformation networks worldwide and has detected no decline in posting volume. Viral charts purporting to show a bot collapse drew on Cloudflare data that captures all automated web traffic, not specifically Russian influence accounts.

Cloudflare itself clarified that its data covers all automated internet requests, including routine web-crawling bots — not just political disinformation accounts.

Zelenskyy told the Warsaw Security Forum: 'If they disappeared when Yandex went offline, this proves again and again that Europe is not the source of the problems.'

Valent's Khan was blunt: 'Yandex data centres have no practical connection to social media bot farms.'