Trump didn’t accuse Ukraine of election interference after strikes on Russian ‘bot farms,’ despite claims

A rumor (archived) that U.S. President Donald Trump accused Ukraine of midterm election interference after it struck “bot farms” in Russia spread in October.

For example, a Facebook user shared an article on The Betoota Advocate website on Oct. 14 that made this claim. The article was titled, “Trump Accuses Ukraine Of Midterm Election Interference After Russian Bot Farm Strikes.”

The article also spread on X (archived). Some users appeared to view The Betoota Advocate as a credible news source.

The rumor about Trump’s alleged accusation spread alongside unproven claims that Ukrainian strikes on the Russian technology giant Yandex’s servers had caused right-wing or MAGA social media activity to decrease. Ukraine struck Yandex’s servers in Sasovo, Kaluga (archived) and Vladimir from Oct. 7 to 11. Work to restore services affected by the strikes continued on Oct. 15.

The rumor that Trump viewed these strikes as election interference because they took Russian bots offline that worked in Republicans’ favor came from The Betoota Advocate (archived), a website that described itself as “Australia’s oldest newspaper.” Betoota is a ghost town in Queensland with no permanent population.

Though the site does not label itself as such, reports by Australian media outlets, some of which have fallen for its fake stories, classify the site as satire.

We contacted the editors of The Betoota Advocate to ask why they shared their content without any indication that it was satire and await a reply. Because the rumor about Trump’s accusation against Ukraine spread beyond the Betoota Advocate’s website without visual signs — such as disclaimers or watermarks — indicating that it was satire, we find it originated as satire.

The Betoota Advocate first shared the rumor on Oct. 14.

It reported that Trump “accused Ukraine of election interference by bombing bot farms in Russia earlier this week, leading to a sharp decrease [in] social media activity worldwide” while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One. 

We found no record of Trump speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Oct. 14. Trump did address reporters in Bullhead City, Arizona, on Oct. 14, but did not speak about Russia, Ukraine or strikes on Yandex’s servers.

Searches on DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo also returned no results for Trump’s reported quotes (archived, archived, archived). If Trump had accused Ukraine of election interference as The Betoota Advocate claimed, journalists with reputable news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, would have widely reported on it, and those search inquiries would have uncovered such evidence. 

That was not the case. We did not find any credible reporting that corroborated The Betoota Advocate’s report.

The satirical report on The Betoota Advocate website also claimed that online chatter around Germany’s far-right political party Alternative für Deutschland had decreased following Ukraine’s strikes. A previous Snopes report found this claim was unproven, and likely stemmed from a graph shared by a member of the European Parliament that lacked context.

For further reading, Snopes has previously investigated other satirical claims from The Betoota Advocate.

Since the effectiveness of satire is subjective, we use “originated as satire” or “labeled satire” ratings based on creators’ description of their work. It’s your call on whether you agree.

Sources