On the morning of October 17, 2018, Kerch Polytechnic College’s hallways were typical. Pupils made their way to class on foot. Workers became accustomed to their routines. Kerch, a port town on Crimea’s easternmost point, moved at its customary leisurely pace. Then, at approximately 10:02 a.m., Vladislav Roslyakov, an 18-year-old fourth-year student, entered the college and opened fire.
Twenty people had died and seventy-three had been injured by the time it was over. Teenagers made up the majority of the victims.
This was meticulously planned by Roslyakov. He was seen legally buying 150 rounds of ammunition for the 12-gauge shotgun he had purchased four days prior to the attack. He had attended a shooting club, turned in his medical records, and finished the necessary safety training. Everything is in order. That is unsettling not only because a system failed but also because, in many respects, the system functioned exactly as intended and was still unable to anticipate future events.
In the worst way possible, the attack itself was methodical. Surveillance footage showed Roslyakov calmly moving through hallways while shooting at employees and students, pausing occasionally to shoot at fire extinguishers and monitors, almost as if he was punishing the building itself. His white T-shirt bore the Russian word for “hatred.” In the college dining room, he had also planted a sizable nail bomb, which exploded during the assault. Before he committed suicide in the college library—near a bookshelf, in a detail that feels almost literary and is probably best left uninterpreted—at least thirty shots were fired.
Weeks were spent by investigators trying to figure out why. What appeared was a depressing and familiar portrait. Roslyakov was raised in a challenging household; when Vladislav was about ten years old, his father suffered a serious head injury, became incapacitated and an alcoholic, and became violent. As a Jehovah’s Witness, his mother strictly regulated his social life, limiting his use of computers and his interactions with peers. He didn’t have many true friends in college. He became interested in explosives, weapons, and online groups that glorified mass murderers. According to reports, he had modeled parts of his attack after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre perpetrators and expressed admiration for them. Later, Russian media dubbed it “Russia’s Columbine.” Even if it simplifies a more nuanced tale, it’s a label that sticks.
The warning trail that existed but was overlooked or ignored is more difficult to deal with. He had publicly discussed suicide and mass shootings on social media in the days preceding the attack. According to a friend, he publicly expressed his dislike for the college and vowed to exact revenge on the instructors. He had once sprayed pepper spray in class without saying why. These signals are not concealed. They make a lot of noise.
The aftermath of the attack persisted long after the initial period of mourning. A 15-year-old in the Saratov region who was inspired by Roslyakov, a potential attacker in Moscow Oblast who had participated in online groups devoted to the “Kerch shooter,” and two teenagers detained in Kerch itself while allegedly plotting a similar attack were among the startlingly frequent copycat incidents that followed. Roslyakov’s techniques were allegedly imitated by the perpetrator of an armed attack on a Kazan gymnasium in 2021. The graphic surveillance footage of the massacre, which briefly went viral online before being taken down, may have contributed to the spread of its sinister influence. It’s difficult to quantify, but it’s also hard to ignore.
Russian local and federal budgets provided financial compensation to the victims’ families. Less than a week later, students entered the building again and went through identity checks. As always, life went on. However, the Kerch Polytechnic massacre did not end amicably. It raised an issue that no research has adequately addressed: what goes unnoticed in youth, institutions, and society.
