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Key developments – Ukrainian drone strikes knocked out three major Yandex data centres in Russia, halting automated traffic and disrupting cloud services used by Russian political bots. The outages caused a notable drop in automated political messaging, prompting analysts to note a "de‑Russified" internet and a temporary quieting of Russian disinformation networks.
Why it matters – Yandex’s infrastructure powers many of the automated accounts identified in a U.S. Justice Department probe that spread pro‑Russian material. The sudden loss of these servers reduced the capacity for large‑scale bot farms, potentially lowering the volume of coordinated false narratives aimed at foreign audiences, including ahead of upcoming elections.
What to watch next – Whether Russia can quickly restore the compromised data centres or shift its disinformation operations to alternative cloud providers; how other platforms, especially Elon Musk’s X, continue to serve as vectors for election‑related false claims, as highlighted by recent fake stories about Texas Senate candidate James Talarico; and if further Ukrainian strikes target additional digital assets that underpin state‑backed propaganda networks. [[1, 2]]