Siemoniak cited AI-made graphic on Russian bot drop after Ukraine hit Yandex data centres
Poland's coordinating minister for special services said the ABW had seen a sharp fall in Russian bot activity. The claim traced back to an AI-generated graphic that politicians and MEPs shared, and researchers deny any such drop.
The minister's claim
Tomasz Siemoniak, minister coordinator of the special services, told a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and ministers on school security on Monday, 12 October 2026. The meeting followed acts of violence in schools the previous week. He said the Internal Security Agency (ABW) was observing a sharp fall in Russian bot activity and linked it to Ukraine's strikes on Yandex data centres.
The ABW is observing a significant, radical decline in the activity of Russian bots online.
Siemoniak added that the phenomenon was global after the bombing of three data centres and the disabling of three Russian supercomputers. He also said that during every crisis of this kind Russian bot activity had been "gigantic". Niebezpiecznik noted that the ABW had not published anything on the matter.
Ukraine's strikes on Yandex
Ukraine struck three Yandex data centres in Russia on 8, 9 and 11 October, according to Polsat News. Wpolityce reported that three of the five data centres belonging to the company had been attacked, and at least one was completely shut down. Niebezpiecznik confirmed that the strikes disabled many Yandex services. Tom's Hardware, citing Cloudflare data, reported that Russian bot activity had dropped almost to zero, and many readers took this as a blow to Russian propaganda. Experts quickly said the bots in question were used by the Yandex browser to index web pages, not to spread political narratives.
- Ukraine strikes the first of three Yandex data centres in Russia
- Second Yandex data centre struck
- Third Yandex data centre struck
- Siemoniak tells a government meeting that the ABW observed a radical drop in Russian bot activity
The AI-generated graphic
A graphic showing a steep fall in posts by Russian bots spread across social media. Czech MEP Tomas Zdechovsky shared it, and his post reached more than four million views, according to Polsat News. Capital traced the original to a Threads user who described himself as "24-year-old steward Frank". The author has removed the post, and screenshots show it carried an AI-generated content label. Military commentator Jaroslaw Wolski shared it on X, then deleted it and apologised to readers, while KO MEPs Andrzej Halicki, Magdalena Adamowicz and Dariusz Jonski also posted it. According to Capital, the caption described the image as showing "AfD posts since the attacks on Russian data centres", and most viral copies had dropped the AI label. German outlets had said at the time that no evidence or statistics had been found to support the graphic.
Denials and reactions
Niebezpiecznik reported that the German disinformation research institute Cemas, the Hasso Plattner Institute and the think tank Polisphere all denied any drop in posts that could be explained by the Yandex attacks. Their data, as quoted by Niebezpiecznik, showed that neither existing bot activity nor the pace of creating new bots had fallen. Niebezpiecznik also noted that Cloudflare's "bot traffic" charts do not count social media accounts, and that the drop for all of Russia was barely noticeable. Sławomir Mentzen, leader of Konfederacja, responded to the minister by calling the government a "wonderful cardboard state" (Wspaniałe tekturowe państwo).
Open questions
Krzysztof Gawkowski, deputy prime minister and minister of digital affairs, said the services had observed the use of situations linked to attacks in schools to spread disinformation. He added that reports of Russian bot activity had appeared since Sunday, 11 October. Onet reported that it was unclear where the Polish services had taken their figures from. As of the reporting, the ABW had not made its findings public.
