Laura Loomer, the combative pro-Trump activist and online influencer with nearly two million followers, offers a remarkable case study in how a Russian information operation works. The remarkable part of the story is, she has publicly described the process from the inside. For years, Loomer argued that Ukraine did not deserve American support. On her program, she described aid as money extracted from “unwilling US taxpayers.” She called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky an “emerging dictator” who was “in some ways even worse than Vladimir Putin.”JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Then, during a July 2026 visit to Kyiv, Loomer publicly disavowed what she had previously been saying about Ukraine. After meeting with President Zelensky, and after learning from the members of the Ukrainian National Police who monitor the Russian information warfare efforts, that much of her anti-Ukraine beliefs were the product of Russian disinformation, she made a remarkable admission: “I was bamboozled by Russian propaganda.” Among the falsehoods Loomer says she had accepted were that Ukraine was a country “full of Nazis” and that Ukraine, rather than Russia, had started the war. She had also absorbed the broader Kremlin portrayal of Ukraine as an illegitimate, corrupt aggressor and Russia as the party reacting to Western and Ukrainian aggression. Here’s what she said happened. After the 2020 election, she had been deplatformed from major social media outlets, abruptly cutting her off from millions of followers. She had lost the arena in which she had built her career, her community, her public voice – and, to a significant degree, her identity.