Russian servers down, bots silent? Gozi and Zdechovský demand an EU probe
MEPs Sandro Gozi (Renew Europe, France), Secretary General of the European Democratic Party, and Tomáš Zdechovský (EPP, Czechia) have submitted a written question to the European Commission, calling for an investigation into the possible impact of the Yandex outages on Russian disinformation operations targeting European democracies.
The initiative, launched in Brussels on 13 October 2026, follows a series of Ukrainian strikes on data centres operated by Yandex, Russia's technology giant often described as “Russia's Google”. According to reports citing Cloudflare Radar, automated traffic originating from Yandex networks fell to just 0.4% of its previous two-week peak. The sudden disruption raises urgent questions about the digital infrastructure that may be supporting Russian interference in European politics.
“Europeans have the right to know”
For Sandro Gozi, the Commission must act quickly and on evidence.
“The European Commission must urgently investigate whether the disruption of Russian bot networks has had any measurable impact on political activity online, not just in Germany, but also in Italy, France and across every EU Member State. We need hard evidence, independent verification and full transparency from digital platforms. If Moscow has been manufacturing political popularity in Europe through armies of bots, this is not political communication. It is foreign interference in our democracies, and Europeans have the right to know.”
He added: “We must establish whether European political parties have benefited from Russian-sponsored digital manipulation, directly or indirectly. We cannot allow Putin to choose Europe's political winners and losers from a server room in Russia.”
A cross-party call for verification
Tomáš Zdechovský stressed the need for independent analysis before drawing conclusions.
“We observed a dramatic drop in Yandex bot traffic, alongside reports of declining activity among accounts supporting Russia or extremist parties in Europe. Whether these developments are connected remains to be verified by independent experts. Russia has long used troll farms and disinformation campaigns to manipulate public opinion and undermine European democracies. We must investigate these possible links and prevent Russian-controlled accounts from threatening Europe's democratic future.”
What the MEPs are asking
The two MEPs want the Commission and the European External Action Service to establish three things: whether the disruption affected Russian-linked influence operations; whether suspicious automated activity declined around specific European political actors; and whether comparative data can identify the potential beneficiaries and targets of foreign manipulation.
“Europeans must know whether the political debate they see online is genuine or manufactured in Moscow. Democracy cannot be outsourced to Russian bot farms,” Gozi and Zdechovský concluded.
Defending Europe's democratic space
Disinformation is no longer a side issue: it is a security issue. A rare natural experiment, triggered by the war Russia itself started, now offers the chance to measure how much of Europe's online debate may be artificially inflated. The EDP believes the EU must seize it, with transparency from platforms, independent research and a clear message to Moscow: Europe's elections belong to Europeans.
