A wealthy individual from Ukraine, who was a target of a bombing incident in Monaco, has alleged that the top spy agency in Kyiv was responsible for the attack. The explosive device, containing bolts and pellets, was detonated in the Sun Palace apartment building’s foyer on June 29, where Vadym Yermolaiev, a property mogul, lived with his partner and their 13-year-old son, resulting in severe injuries to all three individuals. Yermolaiev, in a statement released by his legal team, accused Ukraine’s military intelligence agency of orchestrating the bombing, claiming that officers from the ministry of defense’s main intelligence directorate were directly involved in the attempted assassination. Although he did not provide concrete evidence for his claims, Yermolaiev suggested that former or current high-ranking officials from the agency were aware of the assassination plot.
The primary suspect in the bombing, Anastasiia Berezovska, a Ukrainian citizen, was found deceased near Kyiv on July 6 with investigators confirming that she had been shot. A serving officer from Ukrainian military intelligence, Vladyslav Reut, along with co-defendant Vitalii Zhykovych from SBU, Ukraine’s internal security agency, appeared in court on murder charges related to Berezovska’s death. Both individuals denied any involvement in the crime, with Reut initially confessing to the murder but later retracting his statement and pointing fingers at Zhykovych, whose lawyer denied the accusation.
Yermolaiev, ranked as the 39th wealthiest Ukrainian in a 2020 Forbes list with a fortune of £172 million from property ventures, faced sanctions from Kyiv in 2023 due to his business interests in the wine and alcohol industry in Russian-occupied Crimea. In his public statement, Yermolaiev described the brutal attack, emphasizing that the perpetrators aimed to harm all three victims without discrimination based on age or gender, leading to life-altering injuries for his partner and son. He labeled the incident as an attempted murder, highlighting the severity of the explosion and the extensive recovery process ahead for the family.
The allegations made by Yermolaiev were refuted by Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Hur, who dismissed them as politically biased statements and cautioned that such claims could impede the ongoing investigation into the bombing.
