The wife of a Ukrainian oligarch targeted in a devastating parcel bomb attack in Monaco has revealed she was not the woman reported to have lost her limbs in the blast.
Tycoon Vadym Iermolaiev was left fighting for life after the explosion on Monday, with a 13 year-old boy and a woman also injured in what authorities believe was an attempted assassination.
The woman, initially reported to be the Iermolaiev’s wife Anna had her legs amputated after the blast according to newspaper Ukrainska Pravda.
But she has since come forward to say she was not with her husband at the time of the attack.
“We are currently in a state of severe stress and are actively cooperating with the investigation and law enforcement agencies,” she told Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne. Authorities have yet to publicly confirm the identities of the woman and the boy injured in the explosion.
The attack has sparked a major international manhunt in Monaco and France, with the suspect still on the run two days later and the motive behind the blast unclear.
Describing it as an “attempted assassination”, Monaco’s prosecutor general Stéphane Thibault said a man acting alone entered an apartment block on Monday evening and left a package in the lobby before walking away.
Moments later, the package exploded when three people in a ground-floor flat approached the entrance.
CCTV shared on social media claims to show a potential suspect, wearing a black jacket and a bucket hat, running from the scene towards the neighbouring French town of Beausoleil.
Authorities opened an investigation on charges of attempted murder and depositing explosive substances or devices in a public place, while ruling out terror at this stage. “We have no evidence to support this charge,” Thibault said.
The Monégasque government said 84 police officers and 50 firefighters had been deployed to the scene as investigations continue.
Monaco’s Prince Albert II said that “all the relevant State services are currently mobilised, in close cooperation with the French authorities.”
Days after the blast. questions remain over why one of Ukraine’s richest businessmen might have been the subject of an attempted assassination.
Once a real estate developer in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, he left Ukraine several years ago, renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2018 and became a citizen of Cyprus.
He also founded the Alef Group, which has interests in agriculture and vodka production.
The businessman, with a fortune estimated at around $225m (£170m), was dubbed by Ukrainskaya Pravda a member of the “Monaco battalion”, a satirical term for wealthy Ukrainians who fled to areas like the French Riviera following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2021.
In 2023, he was placed under Ukrainian sanctions by president Volodymyr Zelensky, who imposed a 10-year sanctions package over allegations tied to his alcohol business operations in Russia-occupied Crimea.
Iermolaiev strongly denied the allegations in an interview and called it “completely surreal”.
He said Russia seized his grape-growing and cognac business in Crimea after annexing the peninsula in 2014.
“We lost everything,” he said, adding that he had hired a team of lawyers to seek the removal of the sanctions imposed against him.
He condemned Russia’s attack on Ukraine and strikes in Dnipro, including one in which his private plane was destroyed.
A source told The Guardian the bomb blast looked like a “very, very personal” attack on Iermolaiev.
“There are security cameras on every street corner in Monaco. That’s why rich people feel safe there. The hit doesn’t seem to be the work of a top professional,” the source said.
