# Yandex outage probably didn't kill Russian bots

> Ukrainian drone strikes took Russian data centers offline, but the bot traffic decline isn't what people think it is.
- Title: Yandex outage probably didn't kill Russian bots · The Verge
- Summary: Ukrainian drone strikes took Russian data centers offline, but the bot traffic decline isn't what people think it is. Ukrainian drone strikes on Yandex…
- Keywords: yandex, ukraine, drone strikes, russian bots, disinformation, cloudflare, data centers, technology, culture, outage, probably, didn't
- Source: The Verge — https://theverge.com/tech/1009594/russian-bots-yandex-outage-drone-strikes-debunk
- Author: Jess Weatherbed
- Published: 2026-10-12T15:43:07+00:00
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: yandex, ukraine, drone strikes, russian bots, disinformation, cloudflare, data centers, technology, culture
## Ukrainian strikes hit Russian servers
Multiple Ukrainian drone strikes over the last week have taken Russian data centers offline and reportedly caused online bot traffic to plummet significantly.
## Charts show bot traffic decline
A chart citing Cloudflare data circulated on social media showing a sharp decline in bot traffic following attacks on Yandex servers, Russia's Google.
## But these aren't disinformation bots
The chart actually measures requests from automated Yandex web crawlers used for search indexing and customer service, not the troll farms pushing disinformation.

> has nothing to do with social media
## Fake charts spread online
Other diagrams claiming to show Russian disinformation bot decline circulated, including one shared by European Parliament member Tomáš Zdechovský about the AfD party.
## Computer scientist flags AI-generated image
Computer scientist Raphael Wimmer suspects the diagram is AI-generated, pointing out inconsistencies including a data point logged for October fifteenth, a future date.
## Yandex services remain offline
The vast majority of Yandex-operated systems remain offline following the latest drone strike, including Yandex Pay, leaving users unable to transfer funds or make purchases.

> we can't yet give you a precise restoration timeline, but we promise: we won't stop until the service is restored
## Key takeaway

Ukrainian drone strikes on Yandex servers caused bot traffic to plummet, but the bots measured were search crawlers, not disinformation farms.