Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian tech giant Yandex thinned out social media bots, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 12 October. Network data do show Yandex’s automated traffic collapsing after the strikes. Disinformation researchers say that traffic is search crawling, not trolls. A Ukrainian social media monitor told Euromaidan Press its own data show no clear drop in bot activity either.

Russian influence operations are a live threat to European votes. In August, the Matryoshka network fabricated news clips aimed at Sweden’s general election. German and French authorities flagged the same network targeting Germany’s local votes and French presidential hopeful Gabriel Attal. A way to switch such networks off would hand allies a new tool, which is why the claim needs testing.

The president’s claim

Addressing the Warsaw Security Forum by video link, Zelenskyy said that once Ukraine began answering Russia’s operation against Ukrainian data centers and its strikes reached Yandex, many social media platforms suddenly became a little easier to breathe on.

Many people noticed less hatred, discord, and provocation because there were fewer bots, he said. It was quite clear where those bots came from, he noted. Their disappearance once Yandex went down proves again that Europe is not the source of the problems, he added.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said at the same forum that allies should ask Zelenskyy to strike more data centers in Russia, answering a question on how to protect their elections from interference.

Three data centers in four days

Drones first hit Yandex’s data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, on 8 October. Yandex said it shut the site down completely. The next day, a strike on its Kaluga site completely disabled several modules, the company said. Yandex calls Kaluga its largest data center, Russian science outlet T-Invariant noted.

Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point said its FP-1 long-range drones carried out that strike.

After the first strike, on Sasovo, a source at Yandex summed up the mood for The Bell: “Things are rotten. We keep working.”

Overnight on 11 October, drones hit the third site, in Vladimir. Yandex said it fully halted that data center too. Vladimir Oblast Governor Aleksandr Avdeev acknowledged an attack on “infrastructure” near the city. It started a fire and cut power to two substations serving 5,000 residents, he claimed.

What the traffic data show

Automated web requests from Yandex’s network fell to 0.4% of their two-week peak after the third strike, Cloudflare Radar data showed, Cybernews reported. That chart counts automated requests to websites, mostly from Yandex’s own search crawlers. It does not count social media posts.

The chart “has nothing to do with social media,” the Russian opposition analysis group Antibot4navalny wrote.

Russia’s overall bot traffic last week looked much like any other week. Yandex’s own figure began recovering on Sunday. Covert troll farms usually hide behind residential proxies, hacked devices, virtual private networks (VPNs), and Western cloud providers, the outlet added.

What Ukrainian social media shows so far

Yevhen Luzan tracks Ukrainian social media sentiment as an analyst at the Ukrainian nonprofit CAT-UA. Its daily reviews sample about 500 random posts. On 11 October, that sample showed an unusually small share of posts criticizing Ukraine’s authorities, he told Euromaidan Press. Accounts showing signs of bot activity made up only a few tenths of a percent of that criticism. That is within the margin of error.

The same day, though, US President Donald Trump’s deal for Russian diesel supplies dominated Ukrainian feeds. Luzan said a rally-around-the-flag effect could explain the shift, as outrage at Washington crowded out domestic stories.

“To state it definitively and draw a cause-and-effect link from this correlation would be too bold,” he said.

Across the wider pool of about 10,000 daily mentions, CAT-UA sees no significant drop in posting activity in recent days. The curve shows only the usual rises and dips around the start and end of the week, Luzan said.

“For now, even a hypothetical drop in bot farm activity dissolves entirely in the natural fluctuations of the information space,” he said.

How a crawler chart became a bot story

The claim that Russian social media bots fell by half is unproven and built on a misread chart, disinformation analyst Joohn Choe concluded in a fact-check. It traces back to an 8 October post by security researcher Jeremiah Fowler. That post said Russian bot traffic had dropped to 49%. On 11 October, radio reporter Jamie Dupree spread it on X. Tom’s Hardware then ran it under a headline calling the crawler traffic “Russian disinformation bot traffic,” wording it has since changed.

Ukrainian military analyst Tatarigami claimed that Texas separatist accounts with identical “Veteran, Christian, Father, MAGA” bios had gone quiet. He said Quebec separatists and Polish anti-EU accounts went quiet alongside them.

Polish military analyst Jarosław Wolski claimed that AfD’s online support fell 56%, posting a chart without naming its source. Another X user said “Polish” bots had vanished.

Police aggressively dispersed protestors at an anti-government rally in Belgrade, whereover 100,000 demonstrators gathered on June 28 to demand snap elections.

The rally marks the latest mass action in a protest movement that started last fall, with activists calling for an end to corruption and the 12-year rule of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.

Crowds in Belgrade on June 28 chanted "We want elections!" — a key demand of the movement that Vucic has consistently refused. His term ends in 2027, which is also the date of the next scheduled parliamentary elections.

Police officers in riot gear used tear gas, pepper spray, and stun grenades to forcibly dispersed crowds, according to multiple media outlets. Dozens of protestors were detained, though the police did not provide an exat number.

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic claimed that demonstrators attacked the police.

Protestors reportedly threw eggs, plastic bottles, and other objects at riot officers blocking the crowd from entering a city park where Vucic supporters were staging a counterprotest. Vucic reportedly bused in groups of his own supporters from around the country ahead of the rally.

As protests engulf Serbia, President Vucic looks for support East and West

Editor’s Note: Following a number of attacks against peaceful protestors in Serbia, the Kyiv Independent agreed to not publish the last names of people who gave comments for this story. BELGRADE, Serbia — Thousands of protestors walked 300 kilometers on March 1 from Belgrade to the southern city of Nis to

The Kyiv IndependentCamilla Bell-Davies

Vucic, a right-wing populist leader with authoritarian tendencies and warm ties with Russia, has repeatedly accused foreign states of inciting the protests in order to topple his government. He is provided no evidence to support these claims.

The current wave of protests in Serbia began in November, when a train station roof in the town of Novi Sad collapsed, killing 15. The disaster was blamed on government corruption.

While Vucic has alleged that Western powers are trying to trigger a "Ukrainian-style revolution in Serbia," the Serbian protests are not markedly pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian. Unlike mass demonstrations in Slovakia, where activists explicitly condemned the government's Kremlin-friendly agenda, the Serbian movement is focused on Vucic's corrupt leadership.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Serbia has attempted to navigate a delicate diplomatic path between Moscow and the West. It has positioned itself as neutral in the Russia-Ukraine war and balanced its status as an EU candidate with its longstanding ties to Russia.

Vucic made his first official visit to Ukraine on June 11.

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Loyalty to the incumbent administration has been the key requirement for prosecutor generals in Ukraine. Ruslan Kravchenko, who was appointed as prosecutor general on June 21, appears to be no exception. Previously he had been appointed as a military governor by President Volodymyr Zelensky and is seen as a presidential loyalist. Kravchenko became Ukraine’s top prosecutor after a lengthy hiatus during which the position of prosecutor general remained vacant. His predecessor, Andriy Kostin, r

The Kyiv IndependentOleg Sukhov

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced on June 23 that Serbia has halted all arms exports, citing national security and economic interests. He denied that the move was a response to mounting criticism over allegations that Serbian munitions have ended up in Ukraine.

Speaking after a meeting with senior military officials, Vucic said that Serbia is only sending ammunition to its own barracks and all exports are suspended, in line with Serbia's best interests.

Shortly after the announcement, Serbia's Defense Ministry issued a statement confirming the suspension of all arms and military equipment exports.

Vucic's decisions comes amid increasing criticism – particularly following claims that Serbian ammunition has been supplied to Ukraine.

In May 2025, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) accused Belgrade of supplying weapons to Kyiv, despite Serbia's friendly ties with Moscow and declared neutrality in Russia's invasion.

According to a 2024 investigation by the Financial Times, Serbian ammunition has made its way to Ukraine through intermediaries, although Belgrade maintains it does not directly arm either side.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Serbia has attempted to navigate a delicate diplomatic path between Moscow and the West.

In his most recent balancing act, Vucic refused to sign a declaration condemning the invasion – so as not to "betray Russia" – while simultaneously pledging to support Ukraine's reconstruction.

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“After the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, there was an uproar from Moscow,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The Kyiv IndependentAnna Fratsyvir