Who is Ukrainian oligarch Vadym Yermolaiev, the suspected target of the Monaco bombing?
Key takeaways
- The explosion that wounded three people in Monaco Monday night is being treated as an “attempted murder”.
- By: Sébastian SEIBT Members of a bomb disposal team operate the day after an attack involving an explosive device in the lobby of a residential building, in Monaco on June 30, 2026.
- Just before 9pm, a powerful explosion ripped through the ground floor of a block of flats, wounding three people including a 13-year-old child.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
The explosion that wounded three people in Monaco Monday night is being treated as an “attempted murder”. So who was the target? While Monegasque authorities remain tight-lipped about the victims’ identities, media reports point to Vadym Yermolaiev, a Ukrainian-born oligarch sanctioned by Kyiv for his business dealings in Russian-annexed Crimea.
By: Sébastian SEIBT Members of a bomb disposal team operate the day after an attack involving an explosive device in the lobby of a residential building, in Monaco on June 30, 2026. © Valéry Hache, AFP For Monaco’s public prosecutor Stéphane Thibault, it almost beggars belief.
“To my knowledge, it’s the first time in history that such a thing has happened in the principality,” he said in a press conference Tuesday, the morning after an explosion rocked the heart of the wealthy, ultra-safe micro-state in France’s south.