Former Ukrainian politician Andriy Portnov was shot dead on Wednesday morning outside a US school in a wealthy suburb of Madrid, Spanish authorities said.
Police received a call about the shooting at the American School of Madrid in the Pozuelo area at 9:15 am, and rushed to the scene, according to Spain's interior ministry.
Radio station Cadena SER said the 52-year-old was taking his children to school when he was shot several times. El Mundo newspaper said no one else was injured.
Witnesses reported that Portnov was shot "several times" in the head and body by more than one gunman when he was getting into a vehicle, according to Spanish police. The assailants then fled on foot into a nearby wooded area, the police said.
Portnov was a senior aide to Ukraine's former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, who notoriously withdrew from signing the Ukrainian association agreement with the EU, sparking the bloody Euromaidan protests in 2013-2014.
During Yanukovych's presidency, Portnov was widely viewed as a pro-Kremlin figure and was involved in drafting legislation aimed at persecuting participants of the 2014 revolution.
After Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia in February 2014 following months of unrest that ended in scores of protesters killed by his forces in Kyiv, Portnov was placed on several sanctions lists by the West, including the EU and Canada, for his actions as part of the former administration.
Portnov, who had challenged the sanctions placed upon him, was removed from the EU blacklist of people whose funds were frozen for misappropriation of state funds or human rights violations in Ukraine in 2015.
Having also fled Ukraine in 2014, Portnov reportedly lived in Russia in 2015 before relocating to Austria. It was not immediately clear when he moved to Spain.
In 2018, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, opened an investigation against him on suspicion of state treason, alleging his involvement in Russia’s illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. The criminal case was closed in 2019.
In 2021, Portnov was placed on the US sanctions list for "using his influence to buy access and decisions in Ukraine’s courts and undermining reform efforts", according to the US embassy in Kyiv.
Following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, several crimes involving Russia have occurred in Spain.
In one such recent incident, a man who was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds in the parking garage of his apartment block near Alicante in February 2024 was identified as Maksim Kuzminov, a Russian pilot who had defected to Ukraine in his army helicopter.
