This article contains descriptions of violence and murder. Reader discretion is advised.
A devastating knife attack was carried out by a 15-year-old student at a suburban Moscow school on December 16. Livestreaming from inside the Uspenskaya Secondary School, a boy identified as Timofey K., allegedly fatally stabbed 10-year-old Qobiljon Aliyev, a Tajikistani citizen, and injured a security guard.
The perpetrator reportedly barricaded himself inside a classroom before police forced their way into the room and arrested him.
The alleged perpetrator posted an 11-page manifesto onto the messaging application Telegram, which he sent to other students. This manifesto, as well as the tactical gear the perpetrator wore in the attack, contains numerous references to individuals, primarily from the United States and Europe, who have been responsible for mass casualty events and smaller attacks.
The Video
The livestream of the attack was archived online in Russian media, mainstream social media, and on websites and forums around the world that circulate footage from gruesome and violent events, including terrorist events.
The footage is under 20 minutes long and starts in a school bathroom. Facing the toilet, the camera’s perspective jostles and shakes. K. can be seen wrapping duct tape around a box. A black fuse dangles from the object. These appear to be explosive devices mentioned by Russian authorities. (The manifesto attributed to the perpetrator includes plans for making improvised explosive devices.)
Screen capture of the livestream posted by the alleged perpetrator of the Uspenskaya Secondary School attack.
The footage captures seven minutes of preparations before the assailant steps out of the bathroom, knife in hand, into the school. Immediately, other students are seen sitting in the hallway though he did not interact with them.
Turning a corner and walking down a flight of stairs, the perpetrator begins checking classrooms filled with children. A teacher tells him to report to security, and he responds that he will be arrested anyway.
When asked what he is doing, he tells the teacher to “read Wikipedia.”
As the perpetrator roams the halls, a child runs up to him. Seeing the knife, the two exchange words before the child runs away. The perpetrator continues to wander the halls and walk by students, ignoring them until seeing a group of children with a teacher at the end of a hallway.
Pointing to a student in the crowd, he asks “what nationality are you?” in Russian.
It is at this moment that a man approaches the perpetrator from behind. Spinning to face the man in a security uniform, the assailant raises an aerosol can, spraying the man in the eyes and quickly stabs him once in the back. Turning, he runs in the direction of the children, most of whom had moved into a nearby room. The teacher closes a door, but one boy has been unable to make it through the door. The boy runs down a nearby stairwell, followed by the perpetrator.
He is much smaller than the attacker, and unable to escape. The scene is brutal and tragic. The boy would later die of his injuries.
Coming down the final landing of stairs, the perpetrator removes his helmet, and turns the affixed camera off, a little over 15 minutes after starting it in the bathroom.
He reportedly locked himself in a classroom until being arrested by police.
Video circulating online shows the alleged perpetrator being loaded into the back seat of a police vehicle.
Inspired by Far-Right Violence
Russia is no stranger to domestic terrorism and lone actor violence. What is unique about this tragic event is the clear influence of Western far-right killers on the alleged perpetrator. This is apparent in the manifesto and the gear worn during the assault. These items are filled with references to names, phrases, and memes associated with some of the most horrific far-right-inspired attacks.
Titled “My Anger,” the Russian-language document outlines the boy’s preoccupation with noted killers, Islam, and his hatred of those around him, which seeps through every page. The text begins by quoting one of the perpetrators of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, but quickly moves to the author’s disturbing thoughts about society.
“How I hate society, this dumb biomatter. Society is hypocritical, disgusting, stupid and degenerate,” according to a translated copy of the manifesto obtained by the Global Project Against Hate And Extremism. “It is unfair. Every day upsets me when, after waking up, I realize that I will once again have to interact with people. Every day I see people, every day I feel stress, every day I sit alone, one‑on‑one with my thoughts. Every day I live is wasted, bringing me nothing but feelings of fear and hatred. And you are the reason for this. Quite recently I realized that people are worth nothing. Lives have no meaning, and you, people, have only confirmed this to me with your disgusting behavior toward me.”
The text went on to praise racist attackers like Dylann Roof, a mass murderer and white supremacist who killed nine Black people at a Charleston, S.C., church in 2015; Stephan Balliet, who killed two with craft-made firearms and explosives after failing to force his way into a synagogue in Halle, Germany, in October 2019; and several others. Held in highest esteem in the text is Brenton Tarrant, perpetrator of two mosque shootings in 2019 in Christchurch, New Zealand. Tarrant is known not only for the tragically high number of people he murdered, 51 people in total, but also for livestreaming his attack, leaving behind a meme and irony-laden manifesto, and using white paint to write slogans and names of other attackers on the firearms he used.
“You only have two options: either you endure under the pretext that ‘killing is a sin’ and die yourself, having done nothing for the sake of your race, your faith and your land,” the perpetrator wrote in Russian, “or you follow in the footsteps of Brenton Tarrant and kill the occupiers, that’s all.”
The short document states that there is “no way to fight occupiers other than mass killings,” and details the author’s theories about the inferiority of different races and ethnic groups, particularly people from the Middle East and Africa.
The document also has a section dedicated to Jewish people, where the alleged perpetrator blames Jews for Islamist extremist terrorist attacks like those against the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, and multiple targets in Paris in 2015.
“LGBT, leftists, Antifa, the elite, the media, modern liberals, Marxists, the opposition, the secret services, and other anti-white rabble—all of this is controlled by Jews,” the text reads. “Jews control your every move, every search on the internet, every message in your messenger app, every word, every movement.”
Regarding Muslims, he writes, “Islam is a plague that must be completely destroyed. Islam has brought nothing good to the world.” He also inexplicably claims that Europeans must “liberate the entire Middle East and North Africa” because “these lands have always been white.”
A section titled “Motivation” begins by listing the word “hatred” three times, before adding “Muslims for terrorism. Black people for crimes. Jews for organizing terrorism and crime. Whites for inaction.”
The manifesto also contains an image of six non-white individuals who carried out attacks that were inspired by the far-right. Compiled into a panel of six faces, these include Solomon Henderson, the perpetrator of a school shooting at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee, on January 22; Arda Küçükyetim, who carried out a stabbing attack in Eskişehir, Turkey, on August 12, 2024; and a 17-year-old student who carried out a bombing at a public high school in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The manifesto says the attackers, some of whom the writer was unable to identify by name, “have done more for the White Race and the future of white children than you have. Shame on you. Heroes, unlike you.”
The manifesto also contains four pages dedicated to instructing the reader how to create craft-made weapons and explosives using simple materials. The perpetrator credits the film Zero Day, about the lead up to the Columbine High School massacre, with teaching him how to construct explosives. The manifesto includes a picture of an unexploded pipe bomb from the Columbine shooting, as well as another from an attempted bombing by a neo-Nazi youth in Monte Mora, Brazil, in February 2023.
No explosives detonated during the Moscow attack, though it is not known at this time if this was deliberate, if the devices failed, or were only replicas of explosives. Media reporting in Russia indicates bomb technicians were brought into the school.
The manifesto also contains a list of gear and clothing worn by the perpetrator, including a “No Lives Matter” t-shirt. Besides the knife, the manifesto gives a list of the explosives including a “Fragmentation bomb,” “Smoke grenade,” “Suicide belt,” and “time bombs.”
In his final message, the perpetrator cites the deadly white supremacist conspiracy theory, the “Great Replacement.” “The Great Replacement should never have happened,” the manifesto reads, “Yes, I hate society and a huge number of white people, but I would not kill Europeans. If there were no Muslims, I would attack blacks; if there were no blacks, I would attack Latinos; if there were no Latinos, I would kill Jews.”
The “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory takes its name from the French author Renaud Camus and his 2011 book Le Grand Remplacement. It falsely purports that white people in Western countries are being intentionally “replaced” by people from Muslim nations. White supremacists who have adopted his theory often scapegoat Jews as being responsible for orchestrating these demographic changes.
Believers in the conspiracy have committed several acts of targeted mass violence in multiple countries, including the Christchurch and Halle attacks. Others include the 2019 attack in El Paso, Texas, where the gunman killed 23 people, and the 2022 Buffalo, New York, mass shooting, where the gunman killed ten Black people.
Immersed in Far Right Culture
While many attack plots like the one at the Moscow school are carried out by lone individuals, they nonetheless exist as part of a repeating and emulated pattern used by other attackers. As such, many of the perpetrators leave behind obscure and overt homages to past killers.
In the Moscow manifesto, these are references by name to individuals like Roof, Balliet, Tarrant, Henderson, and several others. The gear the alleged perpetrator brought into the attack contains more of these references.
Images shared online of the clothing and gear the perpetrator planned to carry into the Moscow attack. (Source: Telegram).
Images credited to the alleged perpetrator show much of the gear described in the manifesto. This includes a white t-shirt reading “No Lives Matter,” which images shared of the suspect’s arrest show him wearing. This phrase is both the name of a nihilistic, violent organization whose members have been charged with extorting children and committing random acts of violence, and a racist expression adopted to mock the Black Lives Matter movement.
The same image shows a black 6094 plate carrier vest with a “Kolovrat” symbol attached to the chest. The Kolovrat is a Slavic pagan symbol that has often been co-opted by far-right movements. The placement on the vest is likely an homage to the 2019 Christchurch attack, as Tarrant wore the Nazi-aligned Sonnenrad symbol in a similar fashion.
One of Tarrant’s most notable acts was to write messages and names of other prominent killers on the surface of his firearms, a practice that has been emulated repeatedly since. The image posted by the Moscow perpetrator includes what appears to be a replica handgun (reporting on the attack has not mentioned the presence of a pistol, real or fake) and a combat helmet with similar writing.
Pictures showing the complete helmet were not found through open sources, but what is visible includes numerous phrases and tropes common among Western white supremacists. This includes the acronym SYGAOWN, which stands for “Stop Your Genocide Against Our White Nations.” Buffalo, New York, attacker Payton Gendron also had SYGAOWN written on one of the rifles he used to kill 10 people in July 2022. The helmet also had the numbers “13/52” written on it, a numeric reference used by white supremacists that points to perceived Black crime statistics (13 per cent of the population, 52 per cent of murders). In Russian, the phrase “Beat the Jews, save Russia,” was written. Originally a Tsarist slogan, it has become a common expression used by the country’s neo-Nazi movements. Also depicted are the numbers “2083,” a reference to the title of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik’s manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence. The phrase “Remember lads” also adorned the helmet, a reference to the words said by Tarrant as he began his assault on one of two mosques in 2019.
Another phrase written in English on the helmet, “Well I had to do it because somebody had to do something,” may also be a reference to Tarrant, who expressed a similar sentiment in his manifesto, but is not an exact quote.
Images showing K. posing with the handgun, reveal some, but not all, of the writing. What is legible references Henderson, the movie Zero Day, the November 2025 Jakarta school bombing, and Mauricio Garcia, a neo-Nazi responsible for a 2023 mall shooting in Allen, Texas.
Russia is home to a robust far-right and neo-Nazi scene, however, this most recent attack bears many more hallmarks of someone who has been radicalized in the online culture and rhetoric of movements found in North America, Europe, and Australasia.
Despite often having a significant nationalist element, the far right is a dangerous and transnational movement. Its followers often believe that European-descendant people are engaged in an existential war against other religions and races who are conniving to replace, disenfranchise, and eliminate white people.
Aided by telecommunication technology and exploiting mainstream and alternative social media platforms, it has never been easier for manifestos, attack videos, bomb building guides, and numerous forms of propaganda to spread, unabated by borders. The Moscow knifing is only the latest incident to be inspired by these far-right ideas, particularly the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.
