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Andriy Portnov, a former aide to the pro-Russian ex-president, was taking children to school when he was targeted by gunmen…
Unidentified gunmen have shot and killed former Ukrainian politician Andriy Portnov outside a school in the upscale suburb of Madrid.
The murder of Portnov, who had worked as a senior aide to Ukraine's former pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, occurred on Wednesday morning outside the American School of Madrid in Pozuelo de Alarcón.
Authorities said he was targeted as he was getting into his car, a black Mercedes-Benz. “Some people shot him in the back and head and then fled towards a wooded area,” a source from Spain’s Interior Ministry said.
Local media said Portnov was taking his children to school when he was attacked with a gun. He died at the scene.
Police surrounded the private school parking lot, while helicopters and drones flew overhead, searching for the suspected killers.
Widely seen as a pro-Russian political figure, Portnov, 52, was involved in drafting legislation targeting participants in the 2014 revolution in Ukraine before Yanukovych was ousted by a popular uprising.
Portnov fled Ukraine shortly after. In 2015, he was reportedly living in Russia and later moved to Austria. In recent years, he has been the subject of numerous investigations.
In 2018, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) opened an investigation against him on suspicion of state treason, alleging that Portnov was involved in Russia's illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
The criminal case was closed in 2019.
In 2021, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on him, alleging that “Portnov took steps to control the Ukrainian judiciary, influence relevant legislation, seek to place loyal officials in high judicial positions, and buy judicial decisions.”
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Spain has been the scene of several high-profile crimes involving Russians and Ukrainians.
In 2022, six letter bombs were sent to targets across the country, including Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the Ukrainian and US embassies, and government offices. A retired Spanish civil servant who opposed Western support for Ukraine after Russia's invasion was later found guilty of terrorism and making explosives.
In February 2024, a Russian helicopter pilot, who had defected to Ukraine a year earlier in a covert operation, was found dead from gunshot wounds in a parking garage near the coastal city of Alicante.
Wednesday's shooting marked the second high-profile assassination attempt in Madrid in two years; in 2023, right-wing Spanish politician and former vice-president of the European Parliament, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, survived after being shot in the face by a masked gunman in an affluent Madrid neighborhood. Police later arrested five people in connection with the shooting, although the suspected gunman - a French citizen of Tunisian origin with several previous convictions in France - remains at large.
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