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

A Bomb on a Monaco Doorstep, a Shallow Grave Near Kyiv: The Unraveling of a Mysterious Plot

Healfromzero.com – In a wooded area outside Kyiv, workers broke ground expecting to find nothing more than roots and soil. Instead, they uncovered the body of a 39-year-old Ukrainian woman, buried in a shallow grave. Her name was Anastasiia Berezovska, and just days before her death, she had been identified as the person who planted an explosive device on the steps of a Monaco apartment building. The timeline compressed with unsettling speed: a bombing on a Mediterranean doorstep, a frantic cross-border flight back to Ukraine, and then silence — followed by a corpse in the dirt.

The Explosion and Its Immediate Aftermath

On Monday, June 29, a detonation ripped through the entrance of a luxury residence in the principality of Monaco. Vadym Yermolaiev, a Ukrainian-born businessman who had built his wealth in real estate during the turbulent post-Soviet era, was inside. In the instant after the blast, his mind went blank. For a fraction of a second, he wondered whether his electronic car keys had detonated in his grip. Then he saw his partner sprawled across the steps, injured. His thirteen-year-old son stood nearby, waving his bloodied arms. Panic seized the household.

Residents of the small, wealthy city-state were shaken. Investigators initially described the suspect as a man wearing a black bucket hat. The figure vanished from Monaco within hours, and for three days the trail went cold.

From “Male” to Woman: The Identity Flip

Authorities in several countries eventually confirmed that the person who had set the device was not a man at all. Anastasiia Berezovska, a Ukrainian woman bearing a large snake tattoo on her arm, was named as the operative. She carried no prior criminal record. No connection to Yermolaiev surfaced in public records. No motive was immediately apparent.

Ukrainian investigators, speaking to reporters close to the case, assessed that Berezovska was most likely a hired operative working for money. They declined to speculate on who, if anyone, stood behind the plot as a mastermind. What was clear, however, was the precision of her planning: she crossed multiple national borders back into Ukraine before officials even realized they were searching for a woman rather than a man.

Life Before the Mission

Before the bombing, Berezovska had been living as a refugee in Hofheim, a quiet town in the hills south of Frankfurt, Germany. She was divorced from a first husband, separated from a second — a man roughly thirty years older than herself — and raising a seven-year-old son. Financial strain appeared to be a constant companion. Court filings from 2022, around the period of her departure for Germany, show she sued her second husband for alimony.

Her only prior brush with law enforcement was a drunken altercation in Ukraine several years earlier, which produced no formal charges. Ukrainian media reported that she sent her young son back to Ukraine several weeks before boarding a flight to Monaco.

Reconnaissance on a Birthday

Once in the principality, Berezovska spent days surveilling Yermolaiev’s residence. Prosecutors said surveillance cameras captured her lingering in front of the building on multiple occasions between June 26 — her own thirty-ninth birthday — and the detonation three days later. On most visits she was disguised: a bucket hat concealing her shoulder-length dark hair, an oversized hoodie, loose trousers. The outfit matched the initial “male in a black bucket hat” description so closely that investigators wasted precious hours looking for the wrong person.

On one occasion, however, she appeared in ordinary clothing. Her face was visible. The snake tattoo was visible. Monaco investigators said that single unmasked appearance was what ultimately allowed them to identify her as the suspect.

Who Is Vadym Yermolaiev?

Yermolaiev made his fortune in Dnipro, a major city in southeastern Ukraine, during the chaotic years following the Soviet collapse. Real estate was his primary focus, and at one point he ranked among the wealthiest Ukrainians. In 2019 he left Ukraine, renounced his Ukrainian citizenship, and became a citizen of Cyprus. He has since lived for several years in Monaco, on the Mediterranean coast.

In December 2023, Kyiv placed sanctions on him, alleging he conducted business in Crimea under Russian occupation. He has denied the allegation. His oldest son, Artur Yermolaiev, is a recognizable figure in Ukrainian criminal circles. Artur was arrested in Cyprus on suspicion of leading a sprawling fraud operation and was subsequently extradited to Estonia. Estonian court records show he pleaded guilty in April to orchestrating a telephone scam through which approximately 100 million euros (roughly $114 million) was extracted from victims across multiple European countries. He received a five-year sentence but negotiated a deal: after serving four months and paying a fine of 8.5 million euros, he was deported from Estonia.

The Question That Remains

Days after being discharged from hospital following multiple surgeries, Yermolaiev sat down for his first face-to-face interview since the attack. He said he could not point a finger at anyone.

“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.

That question — why anyone would want to kill him — has occupied him for weeks. The answer, if one exists, may rest with whoever hired Berezovska, a woman with no visible ties to the target, no prior record, and a life that ended in a shallow grave before the investigation could reach her. The plot’s architecture remains incomplete: a hired hand, a vanished principal, and a victim who insists he had no reason to be targeted. In Monaco, the steps where the bomb went off have been repaired. In the woods near Kyiv, the ground has been filled back in. What was buried, however, was not only a body.