Ukrainian prosecutors accused two men of executing a woman who was the prime suspect in a recent luxury apartment bombing in Monaco that allegedly targeted a sanctioned Ukrainian businessman.
The details disclosed in a Kyiv court on Thursday appear to be just one piece of a broader, deeply mysterious plot.
Prosecutors allege that Vladislav Reut, an employee of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), and Vitaliy Zhykovych, a former officer of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), lured 39-year-old Anastasia Berezovskaya into a forest outside Kyiv and killed her. Both men were arrested, though a definitive motive for the murder has not yet been established.
According to Interpol, Berezovskaya was the central figure in last week’s assassination attempt in Monaco, where she allegedly planted an explosive device in the lobby of a residential building and detonated it remotely, severely injuring a man, a woman, and a child.
While officials have not publicly released the names of the victims, a lawyer representing the family of Vadym Yermolaiev—a prominent Ukrainian businessman—confirmed that his client was among those injured and that he remains hospitalized in critical condition.
A statement issued by the lawyer noted that the investigation is ongoing and that the family “places its full trust in the authorities.”
Following the attack, Berezovskaya fled Monaco and returned to Ukraine, where investigators say she immediately contacted the two murder suspects. A source told the investigative outlet hromadske that she was under surveillance since she entered Ukraine on July 1.
The prosecution maintains that Zhykovych and Reut drove her into a wooded area near Kyiv, where one of them shot her before burying her body and discarding her personal belongings and the firearm in a nearby pond.
Reut initially confessed to the crime, leading law enforcement to the burial site where investigators recovered Berezovskaya's body alongside 9mm shell casings and bullets.
However, Reut has since retracted his confession, with his defense team maintaining that Zhykovych was the actual shooter. In his updated testimony, Reut claimed that Zhykovych had told him Berezovskaya needed to be "hidden" because she faced imminent physical violence from third parties over a separate offense.
Reut testified that once they arrived in the forest, he refused Zhykovych’s physical gestures to "work" on her, prompting the former SBU officer to take the weapon and fire the fatal shots himself.
Zhykovych's lawyer, Anatolii Ivanov, countered that Reut’s initial confession should be trusted. He noted that the investigation has uncovered cryptocurrency transfers made by Zhykovych to Berezovskaya, pointing to an official response from a cryptocurrency service confirming those transactions.
Yermolaiev, who has been living in Monaco for years, was previously sanctioned by Ukraine over alleged business operations in Russian-occupied Crimea.
His lawyer urged the media to refrain from speculating on the motive behind the attack after attention has increasingly turned to the businessman's family ties to underground networks. His eldest son, Arthur, was previously convicted in Estonia in connection with illicit scam call centers that allegedly generated nearly 100 million euro between 2019 and 2022.
Ivan Stupak, a former SBU officer and security expert, noted in an interview that the most plausible motive for the assassination attempt likely involves this lucrative, often violent world of underground scam call centers.
Centered primarily in Dnipro—the unofficial capital of the industry—these networks are defined by brutal turf wars, retaliatory police setups, and kidnappings, he said.
“Conflicts between rival scam call center groups are considered routine in Ukraine,” Stupak explained. “They file complaints against one another with the authorities, accuse each other of crimes, and try to set up their competitors so that police raid their offices and make arrests, allowing others to expand their sphere of influence.”
While he had not mentioned murders in this context, he said that violent tactics are commonplace.
“There are periodic kidnappings and cases where people are taken into the woods and beaten… violently assaulting competitors is considered fairly commonplace.” Ultimately, investigators must determine whether the attack stems from a personal vendetta or a criminal struggle to control this high-stakes network.
Source: Original article