An international search is under way for a suspected bomber after a Ukrainian tycoon and his family were injured in an explosion in Monaco in an unprecedented attack that has shaken the normally ultra-safe principality.
Stéphane Thibault, Monaco’s public prosecutor, told reporters that a man entered an apartment block on Monday evening, left a package in the lobby and walked away. Moments later, as three occupants of a ground-floor flat approached the entrance, the package exploded, he said.
French media identified the three as Vadym Iermolaiev, his wife and their 13-year-old child. Iermolaiev and his wife had been taken to hospital with serious injuries, while their child was also wounded, French authorities said.
Without naming them, Thibault said the woman remained in a life-threatening condition, the man was no longer in a critical condition and the child’s injuries were not considered life-threatening.
Photographs online showed the entrance of the luxury apartment building damaged by the blast. CCTV footage showed the suspect fleeing towards the French border shortly after the explosion. French media published a video image of the alleged bomber, who was seen wearing a dark top and a bucket hat.
Prosecutors in Monaco said they had opened an attempted murder investigation into the attack but were not qualifying it as terrorism. A second “mirror” investigation had been opened in France, with the motive still unclear.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said its embassy in France, which is also responsible for Monaco, was in touch with local authorities. Ukrainian diplomats were at the scene providing assistance, it said.
Prince Albert II of Monaco condemned the bombing as “an odious act” and said all the principality’s security services had been mobilised.
Christophe Mirmand, Monaco’s minister of state, described the bombing as unprecedented and urged “extreme vigilance” to ensure the investigation progressed as quickly as possible. “To my knowledge, this is the first time in history that such an act has taken place in the principality,” he told a press conference.
The victims were “regular” Monaco residents, but investigators had not established whether the family had previously been threatened, Mirmand said.
“It appears the family was specifically targeted,” he said, adding that surveillance footage showed the suspected attacker walking around the area several times while waiting for the victims.
Mirmand said the suspect’s whereabouts remained unknown. “It is very easy to get from the principality of Monaco to the town of Beausoleil – you just have to cross a street – so at this stage it would be difficult to tell you exactly where the suspect is,” he said.
The minister added that emergency services had treated four other people for shock and cuts from windows shattered in the blast.
Iermolaiev, originally from the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, founded the Alef trade and industrial corporation and became one of the region’s most influential property developers and businessmen.
Once ranked among Forbes Ukraine’s 100 richest Ukrainians, he renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2019 in favour of Cypriot nationality. Ukraine imposed sanctions on him in 2023, alleging he had maintained business links with Russian entities operating in Ukrainian territories occupied by Moscow, including Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
Iermolaiev was not known for espousing pro-Russian views. After Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022, he said his Gulfstream G150 private jet had been destroyed in a Russian missile strike on Dnipro airport.
In a 2024 interview with Forbes Ukraine, Iermolaiev said he had given up his Ukrainian citizenship because he wanted “international protection”. “The Ukrainian judicial system, to put it mildly, is not ideal, and the tax system is not objective,” he told the magazine.
Some Ukrainian media outlets speculated that the bombing may have been orchestrated by organised crime groups and tied to scam-call operations in Dnipro, in which members of Iermolaiev’s family have been implicated.
The Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported that Iermolaiev had been living in Monaco since the start of the invasion.
Monday’s attack has stunned the wealthy Mediterranean enclave, where violent crime is exceptionally rare.
A resident living near the building told the French outlet Nice-Matin that the blast had sent shock waves through the neighbourhood. “The noise was horrible … In Monaco, we’re not used to this kind of event. We’re still in shock,” they said.
Best known for its luxury lifestyle, low-tax regime and annual Formula One Grand Prix, Monaco has long attracted billionaires, celebrities and business elites from around the world. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it has also become home to a number of wealthy Ukrainians, a group dubbed the “Monaco Battalion” by independent Ukrainian media.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
