Three members of a Ukrainian family have been seriously injured in a parcel bomb explosion in Monaco, in what authorities described as a likely terrorist attack.
The device was left at the entrance of a residential building near the border with France and detonated at around 9pm on June 29, Monaco’s government said. A couple in their fifties or sixties were left in a critical condition, while a 13-year-old was less seriously hurt.
The two adults were taken to hospital in Nice, southeast France, and the teenager to a nearby children’s hospital. Four other people were treated for shock and cuts from shattered windows, and emergency services from across the French border assisted at the scene.
An unidentified man, wearing a dark jacket and hat, was filmed on surveillance cameras leaving the package before fleeing on foot into the French town of Beausoleil. Monaco activated its Red Plan emergency protocol and sealed off roads as a manhunt began on both sides of the border. Some residents had at first mistaken the blast for a gas leak or fireworks.
Monaco’s Minister of State Christophe Mirmand said the device had been packed with bolts and metal shot to cause maximum injury, while Prince Albert II described the bombing as a grave crime. Mirmand said it was probably the first such attack in the principality’s history.
French media identified the apparent target as Vadym Yermolaiev, a property developer from Dnipro in eastern Ukraine and a regular on the Forbes list of the country’s richest people. Monaco authorities did not confirm the identities of those hurt.
Yermolaiev renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2019 and took Cypriot nationality, which carries European Union citizenship. He was placed under sanctions by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in December 2023 over alcohol businesses that Kyiv said had paid taxes to Russia from occupied Crimea.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack and the motive remained unclear. French and Monaco investigators were continuing to hunt for the suspect.
The French Riviera has become a refuge for wealthy Ukrainians since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, with many settling around Monaco and along the Côte d’Azur.
