On July 7, the body of 39-year-old Ukrainian citizen Anastasia Berezovska was found near Kiev. He was suspected of plotting an assassination attempt against Ukrainian-Cypriot businessman Vadim Yermoliev, who is originally from the city of Dnipro in Monaco.
A few days later, two men associated with Ukrainian intelligence services were arrested on suspicion of Berezovska’s murder. What is known about this case, which could result in life sentences for the suspects and trigger an international scandal for Ukraine?
murder of a murder suspect
Prosecutors in Monaco believe Berezovska attempted to kill Yermolayev, his partner and their 13-year-old son. All three were injured when an explosive device exploded on the evening of 29 June.
After reviewing surveillance footage, investigators concluded that Berezovska had surveilled the victims over a long period of time. Ultimately he placed a backpack full of explosives at the entrance of his house. The device was detonated remotely using a cellphone. Soon after, he left the French Riviera. On July 6, his body was found in a forest near Kiev.
Berezovska lived with her son in Hofheim, near Frankfurt, Germany. After fleeing Ukraine, he was granted temporary protection in Germany. According to a relative, she and her son lived a modest life, relying on social benefits and learning German.
Before moving to Germany, Berezovska had lived her entire life in Ukraine, first in the village of Horodyshche, where her mother still lives, and later in the city of Zhytomyr. Little is known about his professional background.
Monaco to Zhytomyr
A relative told reporters that about a week before the assassination attempt, Anastasia Berezovska had sent her 7-year-old son to live with his mother in Ukraine. She apparently moved south from the Frankfurt metropolitan area. According to news outlets nice matineeOn June 26, traffic cameras captured him driving near the site of the attack.
Immediately after the explosion, Berezovska left the French Riviera and returned to the Frankfurt area the next day. She did not stay there for long. On July 1, she arrived in Ukraine by bus and arrived at her mother’s house in the village of Horodyshye.
Meanwhile, investigators in Monaco spotted a man wearing a dark suit in surveillance footage. They suspected that it was a woman disguised as a man. After reviewing additional video recordings, suspicion fell on a heavyset woman with a snake tattoo on her shoulder. The car she was using was located in Germany, and later that evening police in the German state of Hesse searched her vacant apartment.
The next morning, Berezovska unexpectedly asked her mother to drive her to a gas station near Zhytomyr. His mother later told Ukrainian police that he had done it. A gas station employee told investigators that he had called a taxi to take the woman to Kiev. In turn, the taxi driver said that he dropped him off on the highway near Makaryev in the Kiev region around 9:30 in the morning.
By the time prosecutors in Monaco publicly identified Berezovska at a press conference about three hours later, releasing her name and photograph and placing her on an international wanted list, she was likely already dead.
Suspects associated with Ukrainian intelligence services
Vladislav Reut and Vitaly Shaykovich, arrested on suspicion of the woman’s murder, have close ties to Ukrainian intelligence services. Until recently, Ruth worked with the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (HUR), the country’s military intelligence agency. Shaykovich worked in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) until April this year. According to investigators, after returning to Ukraine Berezovska only contacted her relatives and the two suspects by phone.
Ruta confessed to murdering Berezovska on the morning of 6 July, when police officers searching for the missing woman visited her. However, she later changed her testimony in court and blamed her alleged accomplice for this. Reut claimed that he had tried to stop Shaykovich from committing the murder and said that his threats had forced Reut to make a false confession during his initial police interview.
Shaykovich refused to make any statement in court. His lawyer also avoided answering questions about his client’s relationship with Berezovska.
Who ordered the attack in Monaco?
Based on the suspects’ statements, investigators are considering the possibility that Berezovska acted as an agent for Shaykovich and Rutt and carried out the attack in Monaco on their instructions, knowingly or unknowingly. If so, the two men may have killed her after the failed attack out of fear that she might expose them. The newspaper has said this quoting sources Ukrainian PravdaInvestigators suspect that the two men arrested in Berezovska’s murder may have also planned an attack in Monaco. But who, if anyone, ordered it?
Shaykovich’s lawyer, Anatoly Ivanov, argued in court that the explosion in Monaco was a terrorist attack that benefited Russia primarily because it discredited Ukraine’s intelligence services.
Meanwhile, some European media outlets have suggested that the attack in Monaco may have been a covert operation carried out by Ukrainian intelligence. According to that theory, Kiev targeted Vadim Yermolayev because he is under Ukrainian sanctions over business activities on the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula and was reportedly planning to deliver a speech in the European Parliament denouncing corruption in Ukraine. However, DW found that Yermolayev had never been invited to give such a speech in the European Parliament.
Ukrainian police and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) are continuing their investigation. The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine has initiated the formation of a joint international investigative team.
This article was originally published in Ukrainian.