by NYA Editorial Staff
Something remarkable happened on the internet last week. Ukraine bombed three Russian data centers and automated internet traffic from the Russian tech company Yandex collapsed. Social media erupted with claims that Russian propaganda accounts had suddenly gone silent. There were also reports that some right-wing online sites in the United States and Europe had experienced a noticeable decline in activity. One of those sites was Truth Social.
Was this a coincidence or had Ukraine exposed the infrastructure supporting Russia’s online influence operations? The evidence is not conclusive, and some researchers have challenged the coincidence. But the possibility deserves consideration, given Russia’s history of election interference.
According to internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, automated requests from one Yandex network fell by more than 99% compared with earlier activity.
Social media users reported that accounts associated with MAGA politics, Germany’s Alternative for Germany party, and Britain’s Reform UK appeared unusually quiet. Some posts went further, suggesting that online engagement surrounding conservative commentators, including Tucker Carlson, had declined because Russian-operated accounts were no longer available to amplify their messages.
Several research companies, including Graphika, examined activity across thousands of political communities and found no significant decline in the accounts mentioned in the viral claims. It did, however, identify smaller declines in some Russian-language online communities.
Nevertheless, the broader possibility shouldn’t be dismissed simply because the original viral claims were exaggerated. Russia has a long, documented history of conducting online influence operations aimed at American and European audiences. These campaigns have employed fake accounts, bots, deceptive websites, and artificial amplification to influence political conversations.
Such operations require an infrastructure depending on computers, networks, software, communications systems, and people coordinating the activity. A disruption to a major Russian internet infrastructure would likely disrupt these operations, even if the most visible traffic statistics don’t measure them directly.?
The Ukrainian attacks may not give absolute prove to have had an impact on Russian political influence operations. The initial research, however, points in that direction.