Did Ukraine’s Drone Strikes on Data Centers Really Silence Russian Bots?

By Mike Nolan

ALBANY, N.Y. (Oct. 22, 2026) — Earlier this month, Ukrainian drone strikes hit three Yandex data centers in Russia, disrupting more than 80 of the company’s platforms and services, including banking and rideshare apps.

A Cloudflare chart showing Yandex’s bot traffic falling significantly went viral, with many online claiming it proved Russian troll farms had gone quiet.

Brian Nussbaum, an associate professor in the Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security at the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, says it’s not that simple.

A former senior intelligence analyst with the New York State Office of Counter-Terrorism, Nussbaum sat down for a video interview posted on Campus Insights Media to explain what the strikes do and don’t tell us.

Can you target the cloud?

State-run influence operations do depend on cloud infrastructure, Nussbaum said, but the groups behind them can rotate to other infrastructure, often in different countries. Short-term interruptions are possible, but long-term disruption is unlikely.

Data centers are still becoming targets because of how much runs through them. In March, a strike on a data center in Tehran interrupted payroll to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps for several weeks.

“As data centers and the computation that they provide become more central to the goods and services in a modern economy or a modern society, the ability to cause disruption by damaging the data centers becomes much more serious,” Nussbaum said.

He also urged caution with viral claims during a conflict.

“Initial and early claims in almost any situation during a conflict are likely to be either incorrect or at least incomplete,” Nussbaum said.

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