Did The Russians Know First?

Something very curious happened yesterday surrounding the terrible tragedy in Minneapolis.

As you probably know, on August 27 a shooter, identified as 23 year old Robin Westman, opened fire on a Minneapolis church during Mass, killing two children and injuring 17 other people. The shooter also died, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

I was scrolling through Bluesky when reports of the active shooter broke. I quickly ran some some searches to see if there was more information, but like most similar situations the only ones who have the earliest information are law enforcement, and there were few details available to the public -- not unusual for this kind of incident that we've all seen unfold hundreds of times.

I happened to get a Facebook notification and as I checked it I saw a very early post via one of the wire services. I clicked the article and there were no additional details.

But there were plenty of comments.

On comment that caught by eye was by an account that had a "Cross Pattée" as a profile picture. The symbol is non-traditional, a kind of neo-Templar or chivalric emblem, similar to a symbol used by Christian Nationalist groups (though not necessarily exclusivley) with a color pallet similar to the St. George cross -- a religious symbol, but one also used by many far right accounts, particularly ones with ties to the Russians.

His comment read:

"Shooter? Muslim?
Not a republican because that would have been the lead!!"

At this early stage such a comment would be ridiculous since there were no details at all and it would be highly unlikely to know the name of the shooter. I commented a reply, hoping to shut down disinformation and hate speech early. I responded, "This just happened. We have no idea who the shooter is. You're so desperate to bend facts to conform with your fragile little worldview it's frightening."

But then I noticed that very quickly the original commenter and several others made reference to the shooter being "a trans," a dehumanizing way of describing a person who is transgender. What's important here is that this account, and several others, retracted their random accusations and rantings and settled on the trans narrative. This quickly became the talking point.

What did they know that I didn't?

I immediately began to run searches across search engines and multiple social media platforms. What I found was fascinating. The far right was already talking about how the shooter was transgender, but no name had been released at this point. Sure, it was possible that this was all disinformation and hate speech, but they seemed quite confident. Which begs an obvious question:

How could they know the shooter was transgender if they did not know who the shooter was?

I doubled back. I began to run searches for "shooter" and "name" and even "trans" and I found nothing that would indicate that anyone had publicly mentioned a name on social media. The talking point, that the shooter may have been transgender, appears to have made it to social media before the news of the shooter's name. There wasn't even consensus of a potential suspect being discussed in the social media rumormill. Nobody knew the shooter but people knew they were trans? How is this possible?

Let's put some disclaimers here: the internet is a big place, and a chaotic one. With the decay of Twitter into X and the advent of the not-quite-so-polished Bluesky, pulling reliable data from social media has also become much harder. It's absolutely possible that the name of the shooter, or the rumor of a different suspect, was being circulated. But it was very easy to find the claims about transgender, and it was not possible for me to find the name. This means that at the very least, the transgender talking point was much more prominent and being spread by far more accounts than the name of the shooter.

I've had a Twitter account since 2008. I've written extensively about disinformation and the uglier sides of the Internet. I've covered countless breaking news stories through social media, and tuned in to countless more even when I wasn't writing in an official capacity. You get a sense for the rhythm, the patterns. In the early stages there is lots of disinformation, lots of "theories" and false accusations. This was different. All the usual theories put forth by the far right -- Muslim, Antifa, Socialist, Jew, Soros-paid hitman false flag attack, and many others -- they were there, but quickly were replaced by a single dominant narrative -- that the shooter was trans.

I've never seen anything like this. It's almost like someone had the talking points ready to go and were waiting for it to happen, like a disinformation operation or influence campaign was sitting on the shelf and was introduced half an hour too soon.

Robin Westman -- a Complicated Person with a Fascination with Russia

I will not make an attempt at this early stage to write a biography of the shooter. Many other authors and publications are already working this story. What is clear is that he was a troubled young man who expressed a grab-bag of opinions and interests: white nationalism, white supremacy, neo-Nazism, antisemitism, the Russian government, war, peace, a litany of conspiracy theories, and, yes, queer identity and gender fluidity.

Like many people who delve into the dark corners of our culture, Westman appears to have been drawn to Russia where extremist racist ideology is openly discussed. He was extremely active on the Russian social media site VK, formerly VKontakte.

The MN shooter Robin Westman also had a VK (Russisn social media) account under the name "Bob Vyostmin." Last posted in 2021.

The follow list seems to be mostly Russian rappers.

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— Jacqueline Sweet (@jsweetli.bsky.social) August 27, 2025 at 5:22 PM

Westman had released a manifesto in a Youtube video before the attack. In it he releases a series of conflicting and confused motivations for the shooting, but it's also visible that he has messages written on his guns and magazines in both Russian and English.

What's the Russia Angle?

I don't want to get too far ahead of the official narrative here, but we know that many people in the west who are fascinated with far-right ideology come in contact with Russians. For starters, there is ample evidence that the Russian government uses far-right social media to disperse disinformation campaigns. We also know that many people in the Russian government and in the public share far-right ideals, and that's not surprising since so much of contemporary far-right ideology originated in Russia (if you'd like to read more on the subject I highly recommend the work of Anton Shekhovtsov, Kacper Rekawek, and others, and here's a deep-dive by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism to get you started).

We also know that Westman had a fascination with Russia and activity on Russian social media, meaning we know he had some contacts with the Russians. This means that it's also possible he was using the internet to connect with Russian far-right individuals or organizations. We also know that the Russian government heavily monitors and indeed engages in such activity. In other words, it's quite possible that Russian intelligence agencies were aware of Westman and monitoring his social media. It's also possible that the Russian government learned of the shooter's identity through signals intelligence, and already had a dossier on Westman, so knew exactly what issue to press with their disinformation campaign.

What I Think Happened

First, let me say what I don't think happened. I do not "the Russians" are responsible for this attack, at least not in any direct way. Yes, they concocted a significant portion of far-right ideology and do their best to spread it, often using military intelligence disinformation and influence campaigns to sow divisions in the West. But I doubt they helped plan or execute this kind of school shooting. It's possible, but such a claim would need significant evidence to support.

But what I do think happened was that the Russian government knew the identity of the killer before it made it to the public, either because they intercepted communications by the local police or because they saw the manifesto and put 2 and 2 together. I think they knew right away Westman was the perp and they spread the narrative that "a trans" was the shooter so that this piece of his identity, and not his radicalized bigotry, became the key talking point. I think they did this in order to exacerbate the culture wars and weaken the West. And I think it's completely inline with their capabilities and what they've been doing for the better part of two decades.

And I can't prove it. These types of allegations are extremely hard to prove. But I'm quite confident that if I had the budget to properly analyze the absolutely gargantuan levels of data, it would be possible. What it would require is an analysis of multiple mass-shooting events and the words used and the accounts using them, and a comparison with this event. I'm quite confident that it would show irregularities.

But the reality is we've shown this before. Extensive work was done on Russian disinformation campaigns in 2015 and 2016, showing definitively that large numbers of social media accounts were introducing and magnifying certain talking points. This played a major role in influencing the 2015/2016 Republican primaries and the 2016 general election. The evidence is clear. It didn't matter.

The largest study on this was published by Cornell University in 2018. It studied over 43 million election-related posts sent by 5.7 million distinct users on Twitter alone in just the course of two months and found that " 4.9% and 6.2% of liberal and conservative users respectively were bots. Text analysis on the content shared by trolls reveals that they had a mostly conservative, pro-Trump agenda. Although an ideologically broad swath of Twitter users was exposed to Russian Trolls in the period leading up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, it was mainly conservatives who helped amplify their message."

And it took two years to do the study. And that study simply confirmed what anyone with a clear head and a Twitter account already knew -- that Russian trolls and bots were everywhere, and it made a difference.

So no, I can't prove it, but as an expert who has seen thousands of events just like yesterday's mass shooting, I'm confident this was different. Anyone who knows me or who studies Russian disinformation campaigns is likely to find my argument compelling, whether I can fund a massive university study to back up my hypothesis or not. Anyone who is in denial about Russian disinformation campaigns would not be influenced by ten thousand such studies or a confession by Vladimir Putin himself. In 2025, the truth just isn't very influential.

What's the Takeaway?

I suspect most of the readers of this post will be liberals and/or Trump critics -- that's my demographic these days, mostly because I'm not writing hate speech and conspiracy theories. To you, I send a warning -- the Russians are still working to rip apart our society, and it's working.

This time they were trying to influence the far right, and that might mean they are firing up that base enough to cause problems. It's already clear than anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes are way up, and anti-trans hate crimes are up even further. Expect more of that. Expect Trump to use this to drive more anti-LGBTQ+ hate and division, and possibly policy.

It also means you need to continue to be skeptical of the information you see. Not all Russian psyops target conservatives. Before Trump, their favorite target was liberals, and there's still plenty of that going on even if most of it is focused on Trump. If a meme or story is ultra-divisive and controversial, or seems too good to be true, make sure you are indeed looking that gift horse in the mouth.

On the off chance that a Trump supporter reads this far, please consider this -- a foreign power, a despot, an adversary, the descendant of the KGB, is working hard to win you over. Why are you so eager to support politicians, policies, and ideologies that Vladimir Putin wants you to support?

Stay frosty.