THE TIMELINE IS WILD: Flávio Bolsonaro was beating Lula the same week Ukrainian drones started blowing up Russia’s Yandex data centers. Seventeen days later, Lula won.
Flávio, the son of Brazil’s coup-convicted former president, finished ahead of Lula in the first round on October 4, 47% to 45%. Almost every runoff poll after that had him in the lead, and the experts were busy writing the 80-year-old’s political obituary.Then between October 8 and 11, Ukraine hit three Yandex data centers deep inside Russia. Services went dark across the country.
Zelenskyy said that afterward it suddenly became “a little easier to breathe” on social media.Meanwhile, Brazil’s polls started moving. AtlasIntel had Flávio up by more than 5 points in its October 8 survey. By October 19, that lead had shrunk to about 2.
On October 25, Lula won with roughly 51% of the vote and secured a record fourth term.To be fair, nobody has proven those strikes knocked a single troll account offline.
Researchers who track Russian disinformation say the evidence isn’t there yet, and the real credit belongs to the Brazilian voters who showed up.But the timing sure is something to look at.The Bolsonaro family has now lost to Lula twice in a row. Bots or no bots, that one’s going to sting.
