US would probably have a large impact as well, of course because lots of internet-users are from the US, but also because the US likes to astroturf as well.
I can confirm that when I blocked a huge swathe of mobile broadband providers in Russia and Israel, something like 95% of the spam on the forum I run stopped instantly.
It seemed like a messy and obvious approach - sign up with a clearly bot-generated gmail account, hit the activation link sent by email an average of 100ms, and immediately post in every thread something along the lines of "WHEN WE'VE FINISHED IN KHARKIV / GAZA WE'LL BRING THE GAS CHAMBERS TO ENGLAND", all in under about ten seconds.
I don't think it's Russians or Israelis behind it, necessarily, but that's where the annoying noise has been coming from.
During the Prigozhin uprising / coup attempt, internet was cut off in parts of Russia, and there was a noticeable slowdown in comments on multiple popular subreddits. I don't know if any studies have been done to evaluate this empirically though
Russia is a waning superpower with a low GDP but a powerful enough internal economy to wage a conventional invasion of a large European country. The US is a much richer country, the leading superpower, and an IT powerhouse. But for some reason the first thing that pops into people’s mind when they hear propaganda bots is “Russia”.
(I would buy China, too. A huge country with a powerful economy.)
That in itself looks like a programmed response.
Of course Russia uses bots and propaganda. But the focus on Russia seems completely out of proportion.
