Did Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centres stop disinformation bots?

Last week, Ukraine launched drone attacks against three data centres owned by Russian tech giant Yandex. After these attacks Yandex announced that they were struggling to maintain their services.

This led to widespread claims that Russian disinformation campaign on social media had been affected, as users produced graphs that they argued showed a dramatic decline in suspicious online activity by bots.

The claim was even made by the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenksy, saying there was “less hate” online as a result of the strikes.
But as the dust settled, it became clear that this wasn’t the simple success story many people hoped it would be.

We speak to Shayan Sardarizadeh from BBC Verify and Amil Khan, the co-founder and CEO of Valent.

If you’ve seen a number, or a graph, that you think we should look at, email the team: moreorless@bbc.co.uk

Credits:
Presenter: Lizzy McNeill
Producer: Nathan Gower
Series Producer: Tom Colls
Production Co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound Mix: James Beard
Editor: Richard Vadon