She tried to blow up a millionaire in Monaco. Days later, she was dead

A Shallow Grave Near Kyiv and a Bomb on a Monaco Doorstep

Qwenews.com – Seven days after Ukrainian investigators confirmed that a woman had placed an explosive device outside a Monaco apartment, Anastasiia Berezovska was discovered lifeless in a shallow burial pit within a woodland close to Kyiv. The 39-year-old single mother had no prior criminal record, no documented connection to her intended target, and no discernible reason for wanting him dead. Yet within a week of the bombing, she was gone.

By reconstructing her movements, locating eyewitnesses, and speaking with one of the men charged with her murder, CNN has pieced together a sequence of events marked by brutality, improbable turns, and questions that remain open. The most pressing of those questions — who wanted the millionaire killed and why — is one the victim himself has been turning over in his mind for weeks.

The Explosion

On Monday, June 29, a detonation ripped through the entrance steps of Vadym Yermolaiev’s upscale residence in the Mediterranean city-state. For an instant, the Ukrainian-born businessman thought his electronic car keys had gone off in his grip. Then he saw his partner sprawled across the stairs, bleeding. His thirteen-year-old son stood nearby, arms smeared with blood, waving them in alarm. Panic took hold.

Investigators initially described the perpetrator as a “male” wearing a “black bucket hat.” The figure vanished. Three days later, officials across several countries identified the attacker as Berezovska — a Ukrainian woman bearing a large snake tattoo on her arm. Authorities in the principality said she had meticulously planned the operation, crossing multiple borders back into Ukraine before law enforcement even grasped they were searching for a woman.

Who Was Berezovska?

Before the bombing, she had been residing as a refugee in Hofheim, a small community near Frankfurt, Germany. Divorced from one husband and separated from another — a man thirty years her senior — she raised a seven-year-old son and appeared to be struggling financially. Court filings indicate that in 2022, roughly when she departed for Germany, she filed an alimony claim against that second husband. Aside from a drunken altercation in Ukraine several years earlier that produced no charges, she was unknown to police.

Ukrainian media reported that she dispatched her son back to Ukraine several weeks before making the trip to Monaco. Once there, she surveilled the target’s residence, shadowing the businessman according to principality authorities. Prosecutors stated that surveillance cameras recorded her lingering in front of his home on multiple occasions between June 26 — the date of her thirty-ninth birthday — and the detonation three days later.

The footage depicts her in disguise during reconnaissance: a bucket hat concealing shoulder-length dark hair, an oversized hoodie, and baggy trousers. On one occasion, however, she appeared in ordinary clothing, exposing her face and the conspicuous tattoo — a detail Monaco investigators say allowed them to identify her as the suspect.

The Target

Yermolaiev had resided in the glittering coastal state for several years. He departed Ukraine in 2019, renounced his Ukrainian citizenship, and acquired Cypriot nationality. His wealth was built in Dnipro, a southeastern Ukrainian city, during the turbulent post-Soviet era, with a primary focus on real estate. At one point he was ranked among Ukraine’s wealthiest individuals.

In December 2023, Kyiv sanctioned him for conducting business in Russian-occupied Crimea — an accusation he disputes. His eldest son, Artur Yermolaiev, is a recognizable name in Ukrainian organized crime. He was detained in Cyprus on allegations of heading a sprawling fraud operation and subsequently extradited to Estonia. Estonian court records show he pleaded guilty in April to orchestrating a telephone scam through which approximately 100 million euros ($114 million) was extracted from victims across several European nations. He received a five-year sentence but struck a deal: after serving only four months and paying a fine of 8.5 million euros, he was deported from Estonia.

“I Don’t Understand the Reason”

In his first in-person interview since the attack — conducted mere days after his discharge from hospital following multiple operations — Yermolaiev told CNN he could not point a finger at any individual.

“I’ve never had enemies. I’m not a confrontational person. I’ve always tried to avoid any sharp conflicts. I don’t understand the reason,” he said.

Sources close to the Ukrainian probe told CNN they assess that Berezovska was most likely a hired operative acting for payment, though they declined to speculate on who might have been the ultimate architect of the scheme.