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Episode details

Radio 4,17 Oct 2026,9 mins

Did Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centres stop disinformation bots?

More or Less

Available for over a year

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

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