Liquidating certain people
Monaco, spy wars, torture chambers, scam call centres.
Bombs, bullets, and torture chambers. Intelligence operatives, scam call centres, and fascist paramilitaries. All the great hallmarks of events in Ukraine.
The latest murder was particularly scintillating for its location — Monaco.
I’ll present three possible hypotheses about the killing. A turf war over control of the highly lucrative scam call centre market? A conflict between rival Ukrainian intelligence agencies? Or both? In the process, we’ll turn our attention to a number of other killings and purges echoed by the latest bloodshed.
Monaco mystery
First, I’ll begin with the facts of this rather ambiguous story.
At 21:00, June 29, a bomb went off in Monaco. The Prince of Monaco Albert II called it a ‘shocking’ and ‘disgusting’ act. His principality’s glorious reputation as Europe’s last safe haven for the rich was shattered. Maybe Dubai still has a chance to attract the world’s hardest-working wealth-generators.
Vadym Yermolaev, who figures among the richest 100 Ukrainians, was lightly injured along with his teenage son, but the woman with him lost her legs. It later turned out that this was not his wife.
Immediately, the French press pointed to the involvement of the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU). Le Figaro believed that the attack was not meant to kill Yermolaev, but was intended as a ‘warning’. They also pointed out that Yermolaev had been sanctioned by Zelensky in 2020 for making investments in Russian-controlled Crimea. The businessman had revoked his Ukrainian passport in 2017, remaining a citizen of Cyprus. The first western reports also shared security camera footage of a female suspect escaping the scene in Monaco.
On June 3, INTERPOL named the suspect — Ukrainian citizen Anastasia Berezovska.
According to the Ukrainian police, Berezovska crossed the border into Ukraine on July 1.
However, she may have been better off in the EU. Berezovska was found on July 7 lying in a forest near Kiev with a bullet in her head. A joint operation involving the SBU, GUR (Main Intelligence Directorate), and general prosecutor’s office arrested two people for the murder, charging them with premeditated murder. The SBU stated that one was a ‘former police officer’, and the other a serving officer of the GUR. The GUR is an intelligence agency that has always been in a rather bloody conflict with the SBU. Berezovska apparently entered their car of her own volition and was shot from behind with two to four bullets.
The General Prosecutor’s Office also posted a video of what they said ‘resembles a torture chamber’ in the basement of one of the two men arrested. This was the ‘former law enforcement officer’, not the GUR officer. More on him later.
Naturally, the accused GUR officer claims to have committed the order on his own volition, without orders from his superiors at the GUR. He also claims that his long-standing contacts with Berezovska, including regular payments, from a card and cryptocurrency account under his name, were kept secret from his employer.
Those are the basic facts of the case so far.
Purges
To begin with, what the assassination attempt on Yermolaev probably wasn’t motivated by. The fact that he was sanctioned by Zelensky is somewhat of a red herring. In fact, Zelensky sometimes sanctions his own closest friends to make himself look good. The great Timur Myndich was sanctioned late last year after all the corruption scandals involving him and Zelensky’s other closest friends, for instance.
And the fact that Yermolaev invested in Crimea is hardly unique. If Zelensky was going to kill anyone who did that, there would be quite few people left among the Ukrainian elite. He’d also probably have to start with himself.
However, Yermolaev’s background is important. The businessman comes from the city of Dnipro/Dnepr/Dnepropetrovsk (let’s just use Dnepr, per the locals). Yermolaev is prominent in the city’s construction and alcohol business. He was named by Forbes as the most powerful construction magnate of the city, and among the city’s top five most influential men.
Yermolaev’s wealth was estimated at $322 million in 2017, but the way that business in Dnepr works, that probably has little to do with the real figure. A 2020 estimate posited his net value to be $148 million, but another the same year claimed $230 million. He also plays a visible role in the city’s ever-vibrant Jewish community.
In other words, he comes from the world of Igor Kolomoisky, the Dnepr oligarch that brought Zelensky to power in 2019. Kolomoisky, or Benya as he is often called, would eventually be imprisoned by his own spawn by 2023, with the once irrepressible oligarch remaining behind bars.
Both Kolomoisky and Yermolaev were on the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Community of Dnepr. Like Yermolaev, Kolomoisky is a citizen of Cyprus, famously declaring that while the constitution forbids dual citizenship, it says nothing about triple — in his case, Israeli Cypriot, and Ukrainian. Kolomoisky also got rid of his Ukrainian passport in 2022. The Golden Rose Synagogue often gives honorary roles to Yermolaev at their yearly celebrations — said synagogue is part of the city’s massive ‘Menorah Centre’, whose construction was financed by Kolomoisky and Yermolaev. It is supposedly the largest Jewish centre in the world.
A final tidbit is that Yermolaev’s construction company, Dnepro’s largest, is called ‘Aleph Group’, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The representation of God’s Oneness, per the Kabbalistic tradition.
Founded in 1998, Aleph Group dabbles in a number of sectors, including within it 13 subsidiary businesses. Its activities include luxury apple cultivation, dental implants, and hte production of aerated concrete. The group’s alcohol division, Alev-Vinal, produces wine, vodka, and cognac. Aleph Estate, founded in 2001, built Dnepr’s first shopping mall in 2004.
It was because Aleph continued operating in Crimea after 2014 that Yermolaev would be hit with 10-year sanctions in December 2023 by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. This happened right as Kolomoisky and the rest of the Dnepr clan were being expropriated. Yermolaev, for his part, rejected the accusations and claimed that his assets in Crimea had themselves been seized by the Russians long ago.
Following his 2023 imprisonment, Kolomoisky’s business empire has been nationalised and otherwise expropriated by the Zelensky clan, particularly figures like Timur Myndich, Kolomoisky’s former aide (his barbecue boy, the imprisoned billionaire said). Kolomoisky’s partner Bogolyubov, after fleeing the country in a rather interesting manner, told the press in 2024 that the government tried to extort $100 million out of him if he wanted to avoid jail.
The Kolomoisky-aligned parliamentarian Oleksandr Dubinsky was also arrested in 2023. He was put away on the grounds that his role in publicising Biden’s dark deeds in Ukraine damaged relations with the US. Back in 2020, when Dubinsky participated in those leaks, the anti-Biden campaign was supported by Zelensky as a way to get on Trump’s good side. Dubinsky has also been complaining in recent weeks about the worsening of his conditions in jail, constantly warning about supposedly imminent plans to transfer him to a secret facility, where he won’t be able to post dozens of delightfully conspiratorial telegram messages a day.
And finally, there is also the assassination of Andrey Portnov in May 2025. This highly influential attorney was also quite close to Kolomoisky and Dubinsky, though he maintained better relations with the Zelensky clan long after 2022. I am inclined to believe that Portnov was killed by anti-Zelensky pro-NATO forces, as I explained in more detail here.
Anyway, all that is to say that the Kolomoisky clan has fared quite badly in wartime. Those, at least, that want to continue independent operations without folding under the racket of the Zelensky Family. Along with financial questions, Kolomoisky and all figures connected with him are often derided by pro-western forces media as excessively supportive of the Russian language and a ‘capitulation’ peace deal with Russia.
There’s certainly no need to paint Kolomoisky and co as particularly principled. However, it does seem rather clear that he and his ilk believe they could recover their assets and get out of jail in a post-war situation where Zelensky leaves office and wartime dictatorship ends. Their outspoken (and at this point, rather sad) support for Trump’s ‘peace plans’ is a case in point.
Now, Yermolaev wasn’t Kolomoisky’s closest ally, and it probably isn’t worth seeing this as merely another purge of the Dnepr clan. Nevertheless, Yermolaev’s origins and contacts probably makes him rather expendable in the current moment. No one in high offices is going to shed tears if he gets clipped in a business dispute, so to speak.
Office Lord
And Yermolaev certainly had his fingers in some dangerous spheres of business. Scam call centres, the business that his Dnepr is so famous for. It seems that in wartime, Yermolaev decided to appropriate part of the vast revenue flowing through this market. Quite logical for anyone owning real estate in Dnepr.
