Automated HTTP traffic from Russian tech giant Yandex plunged by up to 99 percent following Ukrainian drone strikes on its data centers this October. The physical destruction of servers disrupted cloud services, courts, and online platforms across Russia, sparking fierce debates over automated bot operations and digital infrastructure resilience.
Physical Strikes on Yandex Data Centers Halt Cloud Services and Court Systems
Ukrainian drone strikes targeted three of the five major data centers operated by Russian technology giant Yandex in October 2026. The campaign began on October 8 with an attack on a facility in Sasovo, Riazan Oblast, which housed two of the three supercomputers built on Nvidia A100 graphic accelerators utilized for training the YandexGPT model. A second strike on October 9 hit an installation in the Kaluga Oblast, one of the largest structures of its kind in Russia with a maximum power input of 63 megawatts. A third strike followed on October 11 against a data center in the Vladimir Oblast, forcing Yandex to suspend operations there.
The infrastructure damage rippled across the Russian economy, disrupting services relied upon for transportation, food delivery, banking, and payments. PravoTech, which operates the electronic arbitration court system, distributed notices of a massive outage originating from Yandex Cloud. Arbitration courts across the Sverdlovsk, Smolensk, Tula, Kostroma, Ivanovo, and Yaroslavl regions, alongside the Altai Krai and the Volga Federal District, were unable to conduct online hearings, record audio and video, or process documents in the My Arbitrator system. Court file access and decision downloads remained offline as hearings were postponed or adjourned.
Traffic Collapse on Cloudflare Radars Sparks Debate Over Kremlin Bot Farms
Following the server shutdowns, global analytical platforms recorded a dramatic drop in network activity. Automated HTTP requests from Yandex network AS13238 fell toward historic lows, dropping from 88.2 percent of peak volume down to 0.3 percent on the night of October 11. Volodymyr Zelenskyj asserted that the infrastructure blows directly impacted Russian influence operations, stating during an address at the Warsaw Security Forum that online discussions suddenly featured less hatred, division, and provocation as automated accounts faded.
Viral social media claims quickly connected the traffic collapse to a perceived reduction in pro-Russian accounts and automated support for political movements, including Germany’s AfD party. Czech Member of European Parliament Tomáš Zdechovský posted on social media that online activity surrounding the AfD dropped sharply after the strikes, prompting him and fellow MEP Sandro Gozi to ask the European Commission to investigate whether the infrastructure damage affected disinformation campaigns targeting European states.
Independent Analysts Question the Extent of Bot Disruption
Independent researchers and monitoring groups cautioned that the Cloudflare Radar graphs captured automated web requests and search crawler traffic rather than active social media bot profiles. Tulechki explained that the widely shared graph captured a decline in automated requests directed from the Yandex-controlled network to websites, not bot activity on social media. The monitoring collective Antibot4Navalny
echoed those doubts on social media, telling observers not to assume Russian influence operations had vanished.
Data analyzed by Cloudflare regarding automated requests for content creation on an undisclosed social platform showed Russian-origin bot traffic dipping by only 5.7 percent, while global automated traffic rose by 1.1 percent during the same window. Furthermore, tracking revealed that suspicious activity tied to Yandex migrated almost immediately to alternative Russian hosting networks when primary servers went offline.
Simultaneous Strikes Hit Petrograd Energy and Digital Hubs
The offensive against digital infrastructure expanded beyond Yandex as a wave of drone attacks struck the Leningrad region and Petrograd. Alexandr Drozdenko reported that air defense forces neutralized 126 drones over the region, though falling debris damaged residential buildings in Kirovsk and Vsevoložsk and caused localized power outages.
The Petrograd Oil Terminal caught fire, prompting temporary flight restrictions at Pulkovo Airport. Simultaneously, the technology firm VK confirmed an attack on its data centre in the Leningrad region. While VK stated that its services continued operating normally, web monitors registered an increased volume of user complaints regarding access disruptions on the VKontakte social network, underscoring the broader vulnerability of Russia’s networked economy.