Ukrainian intelligence agent retracts confession in Monaco assassination plot murder case

A Ukrainian intelligence agent who confessed to killing the woman suspected of trying to assassinate a multimillionaire and his family in Monaco last week, has now claimed he did not pull the trigger.

In court in Kyiv for a custody hearing on Thursday, Vladyslav Reut – who a few days ago led investigators to Anastasiia Berezovska's grave in the woods – said that he "categorically denied" committing her murder and blamed his alleged accomplice instead.

This murky case is capturing attention because Reut is an active and decorated officer of Ukraine's military intelligence agency, GUR, and his co-defendant Vitalii Zhykovych worked for the SBU security service until recently.

On Thursday evening President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would have "additional relevant reports" to share in the coming days.

But the motive for the Monaco blast that targeted Vadim Yermolayev remains unclear.

​The businessman, who made his money in cognac and real estate, had renounced his Ukrainian citizenship some years ago. He has since been sanctioned by Kyiv for continuing to do business in Crimea after it was taken by Russia.

​Now his would-be assassin has been murdered herself.

The two suspects were brought into court for separate hearings with their hands cuffed, surrounded by heavily armed security officers in balaclavas.

Both kept their hoods up throughout proceedings and their faces covered by masks so large only their eyes were still visible. They sat hunched inside the glass courtroom cage for most of the hearings, backs to the line of TV cameras.

In court, the prosecutor clarified that Anastasiia Berezovska had arrived in Ukraine two days after the blast in Monaco, and before she had been identified as the prime suspect in the case.

She crossed by bus from Poland.

Once alerted to the allegations against her, investigators seem to have honed in quickly on Zhykovych, 50, and Reut, 34, using Berezovska's phone records.

They then identified cash and cryptocurrency transfers that the two had made to her accounts.

Straight away, Reut appears to have confessed to shooting Berezovska.

He then took investigators to the spot where he had buried her body in the woods west of Kyiv, in a grave covered with branches.

But in court just days later, the GUR agent announced that he wanted to "tell the truth". He then shifted the blame squarely onto Zhykovych.

"I fought enemy combatants while defending my country," he stressed. "I would never intentionally murder an innocent civilian woman."

In his revised version, he claimed that the two men had driven in his BMW to pick up Berezovska on the highway to Kyiv because she "needed to be hidden" in connection with "a criminal matter".

He doesn't clarify what that was.

On the way, Reut says Zhykovych produced a modified Makarov pistol from his rucksack and loaded it. When he protested, he says Zhykovych claimed it was just a precaution "in case she panics".

After collecting Berezovska he says he was directed to drive towards the village of Yuriv where all three got out on a forest path.

There Reut says Zhykovych ordered him to shoot, saying: "It's either her or us."

In Reut's telling, ​Zhykovych then killed Berezovska himself, with four shots, before the pair dug a grave and hid her body.

He says Zhykovych then threw the gun into a nearby lake along with her belongings.

But if Reut didn't shoot her, why would he confess?

He now says he was threatened by Zhykovych. "He said, 'If anything happens to me, your relatives are in danger'," he claims.

Zhykovych's lawyer rejected that new account.

Shaven-headed and fiddling incessantly with wooden rosary beads, Anatoliy Ivanov described his client as a low-level former SBU officer and dismissed the idea that a mere civilian could have ordered a serving HUR member to do anything, let alone carry out a murder.

He called Zhykovych a "patriot" who had fought in eastern Ukraine in 2014, like himself, and then "actively defended" the Kyiv region after 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

"He does not want to be imprisoned. I understand," Ivanov commented on Reut's statement.

But he insisted that his own client "did not kill".

The prosecutor says the two men acted "jointly and in a coordinated fashion" and both have been charged with premeditated murder.

For now, there are many more questions than answers in this case, which is an uncomfortable one for the authorities in Kyiv.

In court, Zhykovych's lawyer suggested there might be a "Russian trail", as Ukrainian intelligence agents have been recruited by Moscow in the past.

"We've had a lot of such rats, unfortunately," he said.

But he has no evidence of that, and other theories from corruption to organised crime have also been mooted.

"All versions are being considered," prosecutor Dmytro Tkachuk told the BBC.

He added that one suspect had "revealed" some information about a possible motive but said it would hinder the investigation to make that public at this time.

"We are checking the information," he said.

Both men were denied bail by the judge and remanded in custody while the investigation continues.

Additional reporting by Anastasiia Levchenko and Mariana Matveichuk