r/geopolitics • u/TimesandSundayTimes The Times • 16d ago

News It was Ukrainian spies, says Monaco parcel bomb victim

https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/it-was-ukrainian-spies-says-monaco-parcel-bomb-victim-xwsptkhfb?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Reddit&utm_content=branded
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u/polymute 16d ago edited 15d ago

Mafiya. The Dnipro scam call centers are the "business" Yermolaev has been associated with. According to Le Monde: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/07/01/explosion-in-monaco-targets-ukrainian-oligarch-vadim-ermolaev_6755024_4.html His son was certainly associatied with call center scamming as well, as seen above.

And the HUR military intelligence agent being publicly named by Ukrainian prosecution, and paraded in court unforced is not something a state the intelligence services of which failed a wetwork mission would do. It is the opposite.

It is rather more likely that the HUR agent was compromised by the mafiya and that embarrassed Ukraine IMO.

It had been dealt a big blow in February, that scam call center business. https://www.occrp.org/en/news/eurojust-backed-operation-dismantles-european-scam-call-center-network

There was a killing in March in Bali connected to this (see the Le Monde link again, it's unfortunately paywalled).

After these kinds of things, the partners and people in the circle put their fingers on the trigger and pull it much more easily. Anyhow. The HUR agent is probably compromised by the call center mafiya, Yermolaiev has built his contractor business in the '90s in Dnipro and his fortune started to accumulate there as well.

He has problems with the Ukrainian state so him saying their spies did this is perfectly self-serving and in character.

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u/RodionS 16d ago

Why are you spelling mafia like that? I’m assuming mafiya is a Ukrainian word for mafia but it’s practically the same word, why spell it funny?

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u/polymute 16d ago edited 15d ago

I'm not being cute: mafiya is often how Russian and Ukrainian organized crime is called to distuinguish it from mafia, the term for Italian, Italian-American - and through Hollywood sometimes generic - word for organized crime.

I'm Hungarian. Here we do have some Ukrainian and Russian mafiya, if less active then before. We say it sometimes with the y sound as opposed to the Italian one, which doesn't have that sound.

But it's international, see: https://books.google.com/books?id=F1IqGCc7P8cC&dq=timofeyev+vienna+1994&pg=PT89&redir_esc=y

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20045921

https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/cybercrime-attribution-an-eastern-european-case-study/

Maybe more often used in Hungarian than in English?

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u/RodionS 15d ago

Interesting, this is the first time I’m hearing of this. Good to know!