Analysis: Ukrainian drone strikes reportedly sent Russian bot traffic plummeting, so could destroying data centres really silence online disinformation?
Imagine spending years trying to tackle online disinformation through fact-checking, content moderation and sophisticated detection systems, only for reports to emerge that a handful of drones had achieved what technology companies have struggled to accomplish. That was the extraordinary possibility raised following Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian data centres .
Facilities operated by Russian technology giant Yandex were hit, disrupting parts of the company's digital infrastructure . Reports of collapsing automated internet traffic soon prompted speculation that Russian propaganda bots had suddenly gone quiet.
From Wired, a Yandex data centre near Moscow was taken offline following a Ukrainian drone strike at the weekend, the third such attack in a matter of days
The episode raised an unusual question modern warfare. We tend to think of online disinformation as an intangible threat, but the systems supporting it ultimately depend on physical infrastructure. Could disrupting that infrastructure genuinely weaken an organised disinformation campaign? Or might destroying individual facilities achieve little beyond disrupting legitimate services?
When we think online disinformation, we picture anonymous social media accounts, fabricated news stories and armies of automated bots, but what we rarely consider is the infrastructure required to make these operations work. Let's consider a campaign designed to influence public opinion in another country. Someone must create the misleading content, whether fabricated articles, manipulated images or inflammatory social media posts. Websites require hosting services, while operators may use automated software, fake accounts and intermediary services to distribute material and conceal its origins.
From DW News, did Ukraines attack on Yandex data centres disrupt Russian's disinformation bots?
These activities need not take place in the same building, organisation or even country. A campaign directed from Russia might rely on websites hosted elsewhere, accounts operating through international platforms and individuals scattered across multiple jurisdictions. There may be no single server room whose destruction could bring the operation to a halt, as the scale of these networks is considerable. The European External Action Service examined 540 incidents of foreign information manipulation during 2025, involving approximately 10,500 social media channels and websites and 29% of these incidents were attributed to Russia .
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, Prof David Hickton from the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security on the growing, pervasive influence of disinformation
These investigations demonstrate that disinformation operations depend on identifiable infrastructure that authorities can investigate and disrupt. A reader encountering one of these websites might believe it was a story from a reputable newspaper, unaware that the material was part of a coordinated influence campaign.
But seizing an internet domain is fundamentally different from physically destroying the data centre hosting it. Modern digital infrastructure is frequently designed to survive disruption. Leveraging cloud computing allows organisations to rent computing resources without owning physical machines. Data can be replicated across locations, services transferred to alternative providers, and automated systems rebuilt. These capabilities help legitimate businesses maintain operations during outages, while also providing resilience for malicious networks.
If a disinformation campaign depends heavily on one facility, destroying it could seriously disrupt its activities. But where infrastructure is distributed across multiple providers and countries, the consequences may be far less dramatic. Furthermore, these same data centres may also support businesses, communications and public services, so disrupting shared infrastructure can therefore inadvertently affect organisations with no connection to the intended target.
The European External Action Service has advocated identifying the wider networks of intermediaries and service providers sustaining information manipulation, using measures including sanctions, law enforcement and regulation to make operations more costly and difficult to maintain.
Perhaps the greatest limitation of targeting disinformation infrastructure is that a campaign's effects can outlive its original operators. Imagine a fabricated story circulated by hundreds of automated accounts. Initially, its popularity may be manufactured. But once genuine users begin sharing and discussing it, the original network becomes less important. Removing those accounts does not automatically remove the story from public consciousness.
There is a certain irony in the Ukrainian drone strikes. The attacks highlight how sophisticated digital operations depend on physical infrastructure that can be damaged or destroyed. But websites can be rebuilt, accounts replaced and operations moved elsewhere. Once a misleading narrative has found a willing audience, it may no longer need the people or machines that originally created it.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
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