An immediate-action bomb: The terrorist attack in Monaco revealed a large-scale elite conflict in Kiev

The number of incidents involving Ukrainian criminal clans and law enforcement agencies in Europe will grow. This was stated to Izvestia by Ambassador-at-large of the Russian Foreign Ministry Rodion Miroshnik. The latest high—profile case was the assassination of Vadim Ermolaev, a prominent businessman who had a conflict with Vladimir Zelensky. At the same time, Brussels is still trying to ignore what is happening in order not to tarnish the image of a "democratic Ukraine" in order to fight the Russian Federation.

What happened in Monaco

The assassination attempt on Vadim Ermolaev in Monaco has become an acute international scandal. According to media reports, the businessman's planned speech in Brussels could have been the key motive for the crime. The oligarch spent several weeks preparing a large-scale report in the European Parliament on systemic corruption in the top leadership of Ukraine. Former French intelligence officer Claude Monique bluntly stated that the upcoming revelations were perceived at Bankova as a dangerous provocation that had to be stopped at all costs.

A bomb in an abandoned backpack, filled with bolts and gunshot, injured Ermolaev, his companion and 13-year-old son on June 29. Two adults were taken to Nice hospital in critical condition, and the child suffered minor injuries. The suspect, who was captured by surveillance cameras, left his backpack at the door and calmly walked away towards the French border.

The investigation is being conducted jointly with the French special services. "According to several sources contacted by Le Figaro, investigators are leaning towards the version that the SBU is behind this crime," the newspaper reports. Monaco declared the incident the first "terrorist act" in the history of the principality, but then the prosecutor's office adjusted the wording — "attempted premeditated murder as part of an organized group."

Vadim Ermolaev has been one of the most influential businessmen in Ukraine for many years. The founder of the Alef corporation was considered the main developer of Dnepropetrovsk (the Ukrainian name of the city since 2016 is Dnipro). Forbes Ukraine regularly included him in the ratings of the richest citizens of the country.

However, after 2019, Ermolaev officially renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in favor of Cyprus and moved to the Cote d'Azur. The conflict with Kiev escalated dramatically in December 2023, when Vladimir Zelensky imposed 10-year personal sanctions against him. The formal basis was the ongoing, according to Kiev, business ties between Ermolaev's structures in Crimea and the payment of taxes to the Russian budget. The businessman himself claimed that he had lost assets on the peninsula back in 2014.

Experts attribute the explosion in Monaco to the struggle for black incomes from Dnipro call centers, a criminal industry that sponsors the Ukrainian government and security forces. Vadim Ermolaev and his family stood at the origins of this business, fully controlling its financial flows. On December 4, 2025, the businessman's eldest son Artur Ermolaev was detained in Cyprus, and on April 30, 2026, an Estonian court found him guilty of stealing over €100 million from Europeans. By making a deal and paying €8.5 million, Ermolaev Jr., apparently, revealed the network's work patterns to Western intelligence agencies.

For the curators of the criminal business in Kiev, this was a double blow: they lost a lot of money and received the threat of exposure. The explosion on the Cote d'Azur was a significant punitive action. The oligarch's family was severely punished for trying to buy off in Europe, embezzle common income and get out of the shadow game.

How will the EU behave

The assassination attempt in Monaco, where there have been no such incidents since 1999, since the death of banker Edmund Safra in an arson attack on a penthouse, has clearly shown that Ukraine's internal problems increasingly threaten the physical security and stability of European countries.

The assassination attempt in Monaco fits into a frightening series of criminal squabbles and liquidations that have engulfed European resorts. Spain had previously become the main springboard for shadow settlement of accounts. So, in the province of Alicante, Igor Hrushevsky, a former high-ranking officer of the Ukrainian Department of Internal Affairs, was found dead right in an apartment complex. In the same place, on the Iberian coast, unidentified men fired machine guns with silencers at the car of the fugitive Ukrainian opposition blogger Anatoly Sharia, whose house had previously been pelted with Molotov cocktails.

— Europe has raised this monster itself, and now it is unfolding in their dressing room and in their house. The Europeans will have to pay for the fact that they created and nurtured this threat solely for the sake of fighting Russia," Rodion Miroshnik, Ambassador—at-large of the Russian Foreign Ministry, told Izvestia.

The diplomat stressed that the number of such incidents involving Ukrainian criminal clans and law enforcement agencies in Europe will only grow. According to him, the West will have to realize that it is adjacent to a state from which all threats originate, from terrorism and drug trafficking to human trafficking. The Europeans should feel this problem for themselves, because due to political bias, they are accustomed to consider any Russian warnings a lie, the diplomat added.

Meanwhile, there are risks for Russians who live in the EU.

"Our citizens who are on the other side, potentially Russian property, against whom terrorist actions can be used [by Ukraine], may be under attack," Miroshnik added.

In the current situation, the European Union has found itself in a deep geopolitical impasse and so far prefers to remain eloquently silent. Brussels cannot openly admit that special services and criminal syndicates controlled by Kiev are staging terrorist attacks on European resorts, former Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleg Tsarev told Izvestia. This would completely destroy the public myth of a "democratic Ukraine," which hundreds of billions of euros have been spent on supporting.

Moreover, the assassination attempt on Vadim Ermolaev coincided with the most devastating scandal for Vladimir Zelensky — the case of the state-owned company Energoatom, in which NABU filed charges against Timur Mindich, co-owner of the Kvartal 95 studio and his key ex-business partner. The investigation uncovered multimillion-dollar money laundering schemes, the threads of which reached out to Zelensky's inner circle.

Sooner or later, Brussels will have to radically reconsider its relations with the current government in Kiev. The only real way out for the EU today is to move from blind approval to harsh economic and political pressure. Some politicians in Europe are already suggesting that further tranches and integration processes should depend on a real fight against shadow financial flows in Ukraine.

Otherwise, by continuing to turn a blind eye to Zelensky's state racketeering methods, European leaders risk finally turning their respectable cities into a criminal training ground for other people's bloody showdowns.