Search for Monaco bomber leads Ukraine to body, torture chamber

Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Bloomberg News on Jul 7, 2026

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Ukrainian investigators found the body of the woman wanted over last week’s attack on a sanctioned Ukrainian businessman in Monaco, leading to more discoveries that include her contacts with a spy agent, crypto wires and a torture chamber.

The woman, identified as Anastasiia Berezovska, was found dead with gunshot wounds to the head, alongside spent pistol cartridge casings, Ukraine’s National Police said in a statement on its website on Tuesday. The discovery was first reported by news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, which said the body was recovered in the Kyiv region, citing people familiar.

Two men, one of them a former security officer and another a serving military intelligence officer, have been detained on suspicion of the woman’s murder, according to the statement.

Their apprehension was result of a joint operation by Ukraine’s police, the Prosecutor General’s office, and the country’s two main security agencies, Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and military intelligence (HUR), the police said.

Berezovska, a Ukrainian citizen who was 39, was sought by Monaco authorities and Interpol after an explosion in Monaco on June 29, which wounded Vadym Iermolaiev, a developer from Ukraine’s major city of Dnipro, as well as a woman and a child.

Berezovska is suspected by Monaco authorities of detonating a bomb, disguised as a man, before fleeing the principality to France, then reaching Italy before passing through other European countries to ultimately return the car to Germany, her most recently known place of residence.

She arrived back in Ukraine on July 1, police said. There, she had contacts with her family, as well as two men, the ex-officer and the serving employee of Ukraine’s military intelligence HUR, who both made several wires to her bank and crypto accounts.

The wires led investigators to the men, with the HUR officer confessing to the murder, saying he committed it together with the other suspect. The officer stated he hasn’t informed his superiors about his contacts with Berezovska, transfers of funds to her, or any of his other actions, and that he had acted on his own initiative, police said.

“Additionally, during a search of the residence of the former law enforcement officer, investigators discovered a basement area resembling a torture chamber,” police said in the statement, without saying where it was located.

Both suspects have been detained on suspicion of committing murder by prior conspiracy as a group of persons, according to the statement.

Ukrainian investigators are working closely with their counterparts in Monaco and have provided all the relevant information, seeking to identify individuals who ordered the attempted murder of a family in Monaco, as well as any other persons involved, police said. The investigation is being personally overseen by HUR chief Oleh Ivashchenko.

Iermolaiev was regularly featured in a Forbes ranking of the 100 richest people Ukraine. He was sanctioned by Ukraine in 2023 over his business selling alcoholic beverages in Russia-occupied Crimea.