Police in Monaco are searching for a suspected bomber after a Ukrainian-born business tycoon, his wife and their child were injured in an unprecedented attack that has shaken the normally ultra-safe principality.
Monaco prosecutor said this morning that the investigation was opened into an attempted assassination, after a terrorist attack was ruled out through early inquiries.
The authorities are still looking to identify the suspect.
As the Guardian’s Pjotr Sauer reported,
The Monaco government said a suspect had left a parcel bomb in the lobby of a residential building that exploded shortly before 9pm on Monday, causing what officials described as a “powerful explosion”.
French media identified the victims as Vadym Iermolaiev, his wife and their 13-year-old child. Iermolaiev and his wife had been taken to hospital with serious injuries, while their child was also wounded, French authorities said.
Originally from the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, Iermolaiev founded the Alef trade and industrial corporation and became one of the region’s most influential property developers and businessmen.
I will bring you all the updates during the day.
We will also look at the latest from the German investigation into yesterday’s shooting in the northern city of Stade, which left six people dead, and the latest from across Europe and from Ukraine.
It’s Tuesday, 30 June 2026, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.
We are now closing the blog.
Here is your summary of the day so far:
Monaco prosecutors said they had opened an attempted murder investigation into Monday night’s bombing that shook the city, as they continued their manhunt for the main suspect (12:22).
The main target of the attack was identified by local and French media as Ukrainian-born oligarch Vadym Iermolaiev, one of the three people seriously injured in the attack (12:38, 13:33, 17:04).
Hungary reported a new all-time high temperature of 42C as the Europpean heatwave moves south-east (16:53).
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Back to Monaco, we are still waiting for more updates on the bombing that shook the city, but the Guardian’s Luke Harding has this helpful profile of the suspected main target, the Ukrainian-born oligarch Vadym Iermolaiev.
“Iermolaiev is a real estate developer who was born and raised in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. His company, the Alef Group, also has interests in agriculture and vodka production. In 2018 the oligarch gave up his Ukrainian passport and acquired EU citizenship from Cyprus. As well as Monaco, he is a frequent visitor to London and Paris.
In 2022, the newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda identified the oligarch as a member of the “Monaco battalion”, an ironic reference to wealthy Ukrainians who live in comfort abroad while their fellow citizens experience daily Russian drone and missile attacks. Iermolaiev enjoyed the high life and drove a £250,000 Bentley Flying Spur, it noted.
The following year, Ukraine imposed personal sanctions on Iermolaiev after an investigation by the country’s SBU security agency. It said the 58-year-old oligarch continued to trade alcohol in occupied Crimea and paid millions of dollars in taxes to the Russian treasury. His assets were frozen and he was prohibited from doing business.
Several sources on Tuesday dismissed the idea the audacious attack in Monaco could have been carried out by Ukraine’s special services. “He’s an opportunist, not an open enemy,” one remarked. Another described him as someone with “no ideology” and “zero political views” who could not “by definition be a Russian asset”.”
Meanwhile, Hungary has just recorded the highest all-time temperature of 42C in Szécsény in the north of the country, Hungarian meteo service HungaroMet said.
“Preliminary data indicate that both the national and the capital’s all-time high temperature records have been broken,” meteorologist Anna Kuntar-Molnár said in the video, AFP reported.
On Monday, Slovakia also reported its all-time record of 41.1C in Turni nad Bodvou in the eastern part of the country.
Several countries further south-east – including the Balkans – are also still battling with the heatwave, too. AFP estimates showed that more than 95 million people in Europe were set to face temperatures of at least 35C today.
Estonia has released images showing machine guns and sandbags mounted on a Russian-flagged liquefied natural gas carrier in the Baltic Sea this spring, signalling a more confrontational stance by Moscow in protecting its civilian fleet, Reuters reported.
The surveillance images show fortified machine gun positions on the bridge roof of the Marshal Vasilevskiy, a civilian vessel whose home port is Kaliningrad.
Armed guards are common on ships transiting piracy hotspots, but it is “a crazy new step” for civilian vessels in the Baltic, said Yoruk Isik, a geopolitical analyst who runs the Bosphorus Observer consultancy.
In April, Estonian Navy Cmdr Ivo Vark told Reuters that Russia is increasing its military presence in the international waters between Estonia and Finland – the access route to the ports around St Petersburg, where a significant share of Russia’s energy exports is loaded.
Meanwhile, French health officials said that there were at least 300 more deaths than expected during a five-day heatwave in May, the country’s first of the year, AFP reported.
“We recorded 300 excess deaths, corresponding to an increase of nearly 14 percent,” said Caroline Semaille, director general of Public Health France, adding that the deaths were due to all causes combined and were not necessarily linked to elevated temperatures.
Apart from the May heatwave, France experienced a record-breaking heatwave of 11 days earlier this month that scientists link to climate change.
Citing preliminary figures, health officials on Sunday said they registered around 1,000 more deaths than during the same period in previous months since Wednesday last week, when France was at its hottest since records began.
Heatwaves typically cause between 1,000 and 7,000 deaths per year, and “this summer we may be closer to 7,000 than to 1,000”, epidemiologist Basile Chaix of French research institute INSERM told AFP.
The heatwave could return as soon as later this week, Météo-France warned.
The EU has halved the amount of duty-free steel it will accept from abroad, but has agreed higher import levels for more than a dozen trading partners, including Britain.
The curbs are designed to reduce cheap Chinese steel coming into the bloc. However, 13 countries with a free trade agreement (FTA) with Brussels, including the UK, have had their quota reduced by only a third.
“The commission is putting in place the practical arrangements needed to ensure that the EU’s steel measure operates effectively from day one,” said the EU trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič.
“We are providing market participants with predictability through clear and transparent quota distribution rules.”
The new steel safeguards mark the biggest divergence in trade with the UK since Brexit in 2020 and match similar moves announced last week by the UK to reduce foreign imports and boost domestic industries.
They were originally announced to slow down the use of Chinese products in European industries, particularly after trade was diverted from the US as a result of Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs launched in April 2025.
A senior EU official said the EU had been “forced” to act “not because we were copying the US but because overcapacity to our market”.
Diplomats from around the world are due to meet in Sarajevo on Tuesday in an attempt to resolve a deep rift between the US and Europe over a top envoy appointment that could have a powerful influence on the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Disagreement has erupted over who should become the next high representative for the international community, a post with significant powers, in an overt test of political wills.
The Trump administration is assertively pushing a business-driven agenda, potentially at the expense of Bosnia’s delicate postwar political balance.
Ambassadors from the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and the EU, as well as envoys from Canada, Japan and Turkey, are scheduled to meet in the Bosnian capital to make a second attempt to agree on a new high representative, after the first try broke up amid acrimony in early June.
More than 1 million undocumented migrants and asylum seekers have applied to regularise their status in Spain under a government programme to harness and defend the benefits of immigration at a time when most European countries are pulling up the drawbridge.
Although the massive regularisation initiative, announced by the socialist-led government in January, was originally intended to benefit about 500,000 people, it had attracted more than twice that number of applicants by the time the registration period ended on Tuesday.
The scheme offers a residence and work permit, initially valid for one year, to applicants who can prove that they do not have a criminal record and that they had lived in Spain for at least five months – or had sought international protection – before 31 December 2025.
Speaking in Madrid on Tuesday, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the huge take-up of the programme revealed how sorely it was needed.
“The fact that more than 1 million people submitted applications shows just how necessary this recognition of rights and responsibilities was.”
Sánchez said Spain needed immigration to grow economically, to tackle its demographic crisis and to finance its welfare state.
As we wait for more updates from Monaco, let’s take a quick look at other news across Europe.
Ukraine is in touch with authorities in Monaco after a bomb attack there injured three people of Ukrainian descent, the country’s foreign ministry said.
All three are members of one family, the ministry said, citing information it received from local emergency services, Reuters reported.
It did not name them, but said Kyiv is checking their citizenship.
Just a reminder that our heatwave/climate Q&A with the Guardian’s Europe environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan is about to start where he will offer his take on the heatwave just passed – and on what is on the horizon.
Head here to ask your questions:
Both Reuters and AFP seem to be confirming the identity of the target of yesterday’s bombing as Ukrainian-born oligarch Vadym Yermolaiev, as mentioned by Pjotr earlier (12:22).
Reuters has this helpful background:
“Yermolaiev was given Cypriot nationality in 2019 and was placed under Ukrainian sanctions in 2023, which Ukrainian media say was for doing business in Russian-occupied Crimea.
The Ukrainian embassy in Paris said it was checking the identity and nationality of those involved.”
Back to the Monaco bombing, John Bulanadi, a 19-year-old student living near the site of the incident, told AFP TV he had heard a loud explosion last night.
“I quickly went out onto my terrace to see what was happening. There was screaming, crying and two people on the ground.”
Monaco’s prince Albert II described the incident as a “heinous crime” and “a shock to the entire Monegasque community”.
The prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes department also expressed his “deepest thoughts for the victims and their families” after last night’s explosion.
“Security forces are very strongly mobilised to search for, apprehend, and bring before the justice system, as quickly as possible, the perpetrator of this horrific act,” he said.
Separately, we are also hosting a Conversation with our European environment correspondent, Ajit Niranjan, on the heatwaves that hit Europe in the last week – and on what’s next, as some countries, such as France, already start raising alarm about another heatwave beginning in just a few days.
From 1pm BST (2pm CEST), you can ask Ajit whatever you want here:
Reuters noted that the principality of Monaco is surrounded by the sea on one side and France on the other, and there are no border checks between the two countries. Italy is also close.
These are all considerations that will guide the manhunt for the main suspect.
The prosecutor did not identify the victims, but AP reported that he told a press conference that:
“One of the three injured is a woman in life-threatening condition.
The other is a man who is no longer in life-threatening condition and a child whose life isn’t in danger, he said. He didn’t provide their identities.”
The suspected attacker fled into neighboring France, authorities have said.
Police in Monaco are searching for a suspected bomber after a Ukrainian-born business tycoon, his wife and their child were injured in an unprecedented attack that has shaken the normally ultra-safe principality.
Monaco prosecutor said this morning that the investigation was opened into an attempted assassination, after a terrorist attack was ruled out through early inquiries.
The authorities are still looking to identify the suspect.
As the Guardian’s Pjotr Sauer reported,
The Monaco government said a suspect had left a parcel bomb in the lobby of a residential building that exploded shortly before 9pm on Monday, causing what officials described as a “powerful explosion”.
French media identified the victims as Vadym Iermolaiev, his wife and their 13-year-old child. Iermolaiev and his wife had been taken to hospital with serious injuries, while their child was also wounded, French authorities said.
Originally from the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, Iermolaiev founded the Alef trade and industrial corporation and became one of the region’s most influential property developers and businessmen.
I will bring you all the updates during the day.
We will also look at the latest from the German investigation into yesterday’s shooting in the northern city of Stade, which left six people dead, and the latest from across Europe and from Ukraine.
It’s Tuesday, 30 June 2026, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.
Source: Guardian - World News
