Have the Ukrainian strikes on three Russian data centers led to a drop in activity of pro-Kremlin “bots” on social networks?

Russian troll farms shut down? On the social network X, several Internet users claim that the activity of pro-Kremlin digital robots has collapsed after strikes on three Russian data centers. Attributed to Ukraine, which itself has suffered attacks on its data centers in recent weeks, these drone attacks successively hit the data centers of Sasovo on October 8, the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow on October 9 and finally, this Sunday, a final center in the Vladimir region. These three data centers, which are among the ten largest in the country, are managed by Yandex, the equivalent of Google in Russia.

In addition to its search engine, which is commonly used in the Russian-speaking world, Yandex provides its users with cloud infrastructure as well as numerous services, such as taxis and deliveries. “Our data center infrastructure has been damaged, which may lead to disruption…