Ukrainian oligarch Vadym Yermolaiev has said Kyiv’s military intelligence agency was behind the blast which seriously injured him, his partner and their 13-year-old son
The Ukrainian multimillionaire targeted in a Monaco bombing has claimed that Kyiv’s top spy agency was behind the attack.
A homemade bomb packed with bolts and pellets was detonated in the foyer of the the Sun Palace apartment building where property tycoon Vadym Yermolaiev lived with his partner and their 13-year-old son on June 29.
The resulting explosion seriously injured all three, with his partner Anna Nasobina said to have lost her legs in the blast.
Speaking out for the first time following the attack Vadym Yermolaiev, has said in a statement released by his lawyers that Ukraine’s military intelligence agency was behind the blast .
“Based on the investigative evidence available to us, we have no doubt that serving officers of the main intelligence directorate of the ministry of defence of Ukraine, commonly known as HUR, were directly involved in this attempted assassination,” the statement read.
He did not provide evidence for the allegation and went on to claim that former or serving senior Hur officials were aware of the assassination plot.
The prime suspect for the bombing, Ukrainian citizen Anastasiia Berezovska, was found dead near Kyiv on July 6 with investigators stating she had been shot.
A serving officer from Ukrainian military intelligence, Vladyslav Reut, appeared in court charged with her murder last week, alongside co-defendant Vitalii Zhykovych who worked for the SBU, Ukraine’s internal security, counterintelligence, and law enforcement agency.
Both men have denied their guilt. Reut did admit to killing Berezovska at first but he later retracted his confession and blamed Zhykovych, whose lawyer has denied the allegation.
Yermolaiev was named as the 39th richest Ukrainian in a 2020 list published by Forbes magazine, having amassed a £172million fortune from property development deals.
He had sanctions placed on him by Kyiv in 2023 due to his interests in wine and alcohol in Russia-occupied Crimea.
In his published statement Yermolaiev described the horrific attack, saying: “We know that the perpetrators of the attack saw a woman and a child beside me before triggering the explosion. They acted; their objective was to kill all three of us, without distinction of age or sex.”
He continued: “My partner, Anna, suffered extremely severe injuries with irreversible consequences. Our son suffered burns, fractures, and severe trauma. I am currently hospitalized in intensive care and am only just beginning a long recovery. For each of us, the months and years ahead will be marked by surgeries, treatments, and rehabilitation.
“Our survival is nothing short of a miracle. The explosion was so violent that it ripped off the metal railings and shattered the stone steps of our home. This was not a warning. It was an attempted murder.”
Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Hur, denied the allegations, which he described as “subjective political statements”, and warned that the remarks would damage the investigation into the blast.
