Company ordered to stop work at two sites in country, which has found itself at forefront of tech firms’ latest push

Behind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone.

After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches. Residents say that brown water flowing off the site is going into a stream that feeds the Oulujoki River.

While some viral online graphs suggest less bot activity, Zelenskyy’s claims of improved social media discourse do not entirely pass muster

Over the weekend, Ukraine carried out at least three airstrikes on datacentres belonging to the Russian search engine company Yandex. Reports suggest at least two of these datacentres took significant damage, with Telegram footage appearing to show one on fire. Yandex acknowledged the strikes, and Russian media reported that several websites appeared affected by the downed datacentres.

On Monday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested the strikes had dampened Russia’s massive disinformation operation, saying: “It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social platforms. There was less hate, less division and fewer provocations.”