{
  "id": 14796960,
  "title": "Russian bots and influence operations 'weren't disrupted by Ukraine strikes'",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/15/russian-bots-and-influence-operations-werent-disrupted-by-ukraine-14796960",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-10-15T21:26:52.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The National UAE",
    "slug": "the-national-uae",
    "url": "https://www.thenationalnews.com/future/technology/2026/10/15/russian-bots-and-influence-operations-werent-disrupted-by-ukraine-strikes/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asserted that recent strikes on Russia's Yandex data centers led to a decline in pro-Russian bot operations, sparking debate among experts. The issue underscores the necessity to distinguish between bots, social media trolls, and sophisticated influence campaigns, according to Prof Olga Belogolova, director of Johns Hopkins University's emerging technologies initiative. Prof Belogolova, who previously worked for Meta in combating influence operations, cautioned that people are often misled by data, as seen with a viral Cloudflare screenshot that appeared to show a significant reduction in bot traffic. However, she noted that Russian bot operations typically do not host their infrastructure on Yandex. Prof Belogolova also criticized the misuse of technical terminology, explaining that bots are distinct from trolls. When a data center is offline, automated web-crawling and indexing traffic also cease. Cloudflare's data supports this, showing that while search crawling stopped following the Ukrainian strikes, malicious bots simply shifted to other networks, indicating no disruption of social media manipulation or other malicious activities.",
  "summary": "Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's claims that last weekend's attacks on Russia 's Yandex data centres led to a drop in Pro-Russian bot operations is causing debate. The situation highlights the need to differentiate between bots, social media trolls and sophisticated influence operations , experts say. Prof Olga Belogolova , director of the emerging technologies initiative at Johns Hopkins…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 3,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Hindustan Times - World News",
        "title": "'We're done': Ukraine's Zelensky says won't follow Trump's demand of no strike on Russian refineries",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/15/were-done-ukraines-zelensky-says-wont-follow-trumps-demand-of-no",
        "published": "2026-10-15T17:30:31.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "The National Business",
        "title": "Russian bots and influence operations 'weren't disrupted by Ukraine strikes'",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/15/russian-bots-and-influence-operations-werent-disrupted-by-ukraine",
        "published": "2026-10-15T21:26:52.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}