The key suspect in the Monaco car bombing of a Ukrainian oligarch has been found dead near Kyiv in a killing prosecutors are calling a state-linked execution. The case has pulled back the curtain on a murky world of offshore call-centre fortunes, presidential politics, and a ruthless shadow war involving Ukraine’s own intelligence services.
A legal entry and a secret rendition
For a woman about to become the centre of an international assassination plot, Anastasia Berezovska’s final journey began in the most mundane way possible. According to the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, the 39-year-old entered the country legally on 1 July through a standard checkpoint.
Officials insist there were no red flags. “At the time of crossing the border, there were no restrictions in place against her, and the Interpol database contained no information about her being on an international wanted list,” a spokesperson confirmed. That bureaucratic stamp of normality was the last official record of her freedom. Within days, she would be dead, her body dumped on the outskirts of the capital.
A cellar in Kyiv and an oligarch’s empire
The violent death of Berezovska is the latest, grisliest turn in a saga that began with a thunderous explosion on the Rue Revenere Père Louis Frolla in Monaco on the evening of June 29. The blast, which targeted Ukrainian businessman Vadym Yermolaev, injured the oligarch, his partner, and his 13-year-old son. Investigators in Monaco quickly identified Berezovska, a fellow Ukrainian, as their prime suspect.
But before she could be brought to justice in the principality, she was met with a darker fate at home. Her body was discovered after Ukrainian prosecutors released chilling footage of a cellar belonging to a former law enforcement officer. The subterranean room, unearthed during a search, bore all the hallmarks of a makeshift torture chamber. It was here, investigators believe, Berezovska was interrogated before she was killed.
The man who owned that house, an alleged accomplice with ties to Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), has confessed to the murder alongside a second operative. In a statement that strains credulity in Kyiv’s political circles, the HUR officer claimed he acted on a “personal whim” and never informed his superiors. On July 8, the Prosecutor General’s Office formally charged the two men with premeditated murder committed by a group.
Following the money: Call centres and crypto
The investigation has exposed the contested business empire at the heart of the attack. Yermolaev is a major player in the controversial world of offshore call centres through his son Arthur’s company, Milton Group, which controls nearly 150 such facilities. One key line of inquiry for Monegasque authorities is a potential business vendetta. Former partners in Milton Group may have sought retribution after Arthur avoided an Estonian prison sentence by cooperating with investigators and paying a record fine.
Financial forensics provided the crucial link back to Ukraine. Before the Monaco bombing, the two intelligence operatives now in custody had made cryptocurrency and bank transfers to Yermolaev’s mistress. It was this digital trail, rather than a confession, that put them on the radar of prosecutors investigating the attempted hit.
A political hit, not a private vendetta?
For political analysts, the brutal efficiency of the cover-up points to the highest levels of power. The narrative emerging from Ukrainian experts frames the killing not as a criminal settling of scores, but as a stark political message for the country’s business elite: disloyalty is a fatal liability.
This theory rests on Yermolaev’s own political repositioning. The businessman, who renounced his Ukrainian citizenship for a Cypriot passport in 2019, is widely believed to have been a key financial backer of General Valery Zaluzhny, the popular former Commander-in-Chief who has signalled his intent to run for president. The blast in Monaco, these analysts argue, was a decapitation strike against the opposition’s purse strings, allegedly authorised by Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration.
The subsequent killing of the would-be assassin is being read as a deliberately transparent display of force. Theorists suggest the two HUR officers were ordered to carry out the murder without hiding the body, a signature designed to be seen.
The grim calculation is that the operatives, likely coerced through threats to their families, will receive a light seven-year sentence and serve barely two — a small price for an act of political terror intended to cow other potential dissenters. The message to Ukraine’s tycoons is chillingly simple: refuse to pay your dues to the regime, and you can be reached anywhere, even Monaco.
