Vladyslav Reut sat hunched inside the glass courtroom cage in Kyiv on Thursday, his hood up and mask covering all but his eyes. Just days after leading investigators to the grave of Anastasiia Berezovska in the woods west of Kyiv, the decorated officer of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency changed his story – insisting he did not pull the trigger.
Reut, 34, had initially confessed to shooting Berezovska, the woman suspected of trying to assassinate multimillionaire Vadim Yermolayev in Monaco last week. He even took investigators to the spot where he had buried her body, a grave covered with branches. But in court, he announced he wanted to “tell the truth” and shifted the blame squarely onto his co-defendant, Vitalii Zhykovych, 50, a former SBU security service officer.
“GUR officer Vladyslav Reut now says he did not kill Anastasiia Berezovska, blaming former SBU colleague.”
“I fought enemy combatants while defending my country,” Reut stressed. “I would never intentionally murder an innocent civilian woman.” In his revised version, he claimed 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”. On the way, he said, Zhykovych killed her.
The murky case has gripped attention because of the defendants’ intelligence backgrounds. The motive for the Monaco blast that targeted Yermolayev – who made his money in cognac and real estate, renounced Ukrainian citizenship, and was later sanctioned by Kyiv for doing business in Crimea – remains unclear. Now his would-be assassin is dead.
According to the prosecutor, Berezovska arrived in Ukraine two days after the Monaco explosion, before she had been identified as the prime suspect. Investigators homed in on Zhykovych and Reut using her phone records, then identified cash and cryptocurrency transfers the two had made to her accounts. Reut initially confessed, but in court he “categorically denied” the murder.
Both suspects appeared in separate hearings, hands cuffed, surrounded by heavily armed security officers in balaclavas. They kept their hoods up and faces covered by masks so large only their eyes were visible. On Thursday evening, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would have “additional relevant reports” to share in the coming days. What those reports might reveal – and whether Reut’s new account holds – remains to be seen.