Suspect Linked to Monaco Bombing Points to Ukrainian Military Intelligence in BBC Interview
A former Ukrainian security service officer linked to a June bomb attack on a multi-millionaire in Monaco told the BBC from a Kyiv prison that he believes senior HUR officials ordered it. Businessman Vadym Yermolayev and his 13-year-old son were badly hurt.
Vitalii Zhykovych, a former Ukrainian security services officer linked to a June bomb attack in Monaco that targeted a multi-millionaire, has told the BBC from a Kyiv prison that he believes the attack was ordered by senior figures in HUR, Ukraine's military intelligence agency. The interview, arranged through his lawyer, is the first time he has publicly given his own account of the attempted assassination.
What is known about the attack
Ukrainian-born businessman Vadym Yermolayev and his 13-year-old son were badly injured in the blast, and his partner suffered catastrophic injuries. Yermolayev later called their survival "nothing short of a miracle".
Zhykovych describes himself as a "freelancer" for Ukraine's SBU security service and says Anastasia Berezovska, the woman filmed planting the bomb in Monaco, was his "agent". A week after the attack, Berezovska's body was found in woods west of Kyiv with gunshot wounds to the head. Zhykovych insists he neither sent her to kill nor killed her himself.
He was arrested and accused of her murder together with Vladyslav Reut, an active-duty HUR officer. Reut first confessed to investigators and led them to the shallow grave, but days later told a court a different story, blaming Zhykovych.
Theories about the motive
The businessman, who gave up his Ukrainian passport some years ago and now holds Cypriot citizenship, has dismissed several theories. One is that the attack was tied to a struggle between organised crime groups running lucrative scam call centres in Ukraine. Earlier this year an Estonian court convicted Yermolayev's son Artur of defrauding Estonians of millions of euros through such networks, known in Ukraine as "offisy". Vadym Yermolayev told the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda he "never had anything to do with anything" in the case.
Zhykovych alleges Reut told him the bombing was retaliation for "funding the annexation of Crimea", which he understood to mean paying taxes to Russia from businesses in Russian-occupied Crimea. The judge interrupted him, reminding him he was speaking in open court. Zhykovych also said Reut originally spoke of two targets but declined to name the second. Other sources strongly suggest it was a pro-Russian blogger convicted in absentia of treason by Ukraine last year.
Questions from Berezovska's family
Berezovska, 39, had lived in Germany since early 2022, having left Ukraine as a refugee with her young son. Zhykovych claims she led a double life, working with him as an agent "against Muscovy", meaning Russia. Her husband called the claim "nonsense" and believes she was unwittingly dragged into the affair. Residents of her village say she was saving to buy a flat and, when she travelled to Ukraine to collect money, was lured into the woods and shot.
