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A sanctioned Ukrainian oligarch was among three people wounded in a bomb explosion in Monaco that authorities are calling a “deliberate” attack.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: Vadym Yermolaiev is a Ukrainian real estate mogul who has a complicated history with his home country. He made his money developing property in Dnipro, where he launched Alef Group in the years after the Soviet Union collapsed and eventually put up Ukraine’s tallest building. He renounced his Ukrainian citizenship and obtained a passport from Cyprus in 2019 (telling Forbes back in 2017 he held it for “international protection”) then relocated to Monaco around the start of Russia’s invasion. In December 2023, Ukraine sanctioned him, freezing assets and imposing trading restrictions, over his alcohol business in Russian-occupied Crimea. He’s also drawn the same money laundering and criminality accusations that have trailed plenty of oligarchs who cashed in amid the post-Soviet scramble (he denies all of it). He’s one of around a hundred Ukrainian oligarchs who’ve bailed on the war and now live on the French Riviera.

What’s going on now: According to authorities in Monaco, the blast went off Monday in the lobby of a residential building in the luxurious La Rousse district. A suspect dropped a backpack and fled on foot toward the French town of Beausoleil moments before it detonated, ripping through the building. Authorities say the bomb was packed with bolts and buckshot. Yermolaiev, one of Ukraine’s wealthiest men, and his partner suffered life-threatening injuries, while a 13-year-old “very likely related” to the pair was also hurt. All three were rushed to a hospital in Nice, and four other people needed treatment for shock and cuts from windows the blast blew out.

The attack triggered a large-scale manhunt across one of the world’s safest countries, with helicopters circling overhead and police stopping cars on Riviera motorways. Monaco’s Minister of State Christophe Mirmand said the attack was “the first time in history that such an act has taken place” in Monaco.

Asked whether it was an assassination attempt, Mirmand said authorities could presume so, adding that intelligence services were digging into the victims’ background to determine whether anyone else might be facing threats. The prosecutor’s office is preliminarily treating it as a terrorist act.

Surveillance footage captured the suspect in a black hat, tracksuit top and white jeans, but he remained at large.