Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested on Monday that recent strikes on Russian data centres had reduced Kremlin-linked bot networks, leading to "less hate, less division and fewer provocations" online. However, experts from BBC Verify and research group dTeam state there is no evidence these attacks have significantly reduced Russian influence operations.

Tech firm Cloudflare clarified that a decline in bot activity on Yandex's network, which some social media users cited as evidence, includes all automated internet requests for search engine indexing and is "not necessarily bot behaviour on social media platforms." Independent internet analyst Mikhail Klimarev suggested Yandex likely switched off its own crawling bots in response to severely degraded computing resources after Ukraine struck three of its data centres since October 8. Zelensky's office clarified the president was referring to the "atmosphere on social media" and reports of fewer provocative comments, rather than a fall in bot activity. While the strikes have disrupted Yandex's internet services, they have not been shown to impact Russia's disinformation campaigns.