May 21 (UPI) — An ex-Ukrainian politician and top aide to former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was shot dead Wednesday in Spain outside an elite international school.
Andriy Portnov, a former adviser to Ukraine’s former pro-Kremlin leader, was shot and killed at the American School of Madrid — a private institution — in a wealthy suburb of Spain’s capital city.
Authorities received a call around 9:15 a.m. local time and sped to the scene in the Pozuelo de Alarcon neighborhood, according to Spain’s interior ministry.
Portnov, 52, was reportedly dropping off his kids at school and walking to his black Mercedes when he was shot “several times” with about four or five bullets to the head and body, witnesses said.
Meanwhile, no other injuries were reported.
Spanish police said witnesses also reported more than one gunman who then fled on foot to a wooded area nearby.
Pornov had been a senior adviser to Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president from 2010-2014 and a firm ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, after Pornov had been a member of parliament in the Batkivshchyna governing party of then-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a pro-EU ally, before Pornov switched political parties to join the Yanukovych faction after his 2010 presidential election win against Tymoshenko — Ukraine’s first woman prime minister.
Yanukovych, now 74, infamously withdrew Ukraine from an association agreement with the European Union, which sparked bloody and deadly protests from 2013 until he was ousted in 2014 and then fled during anti-government protests that erupted over his last-minute rejection of the EU proposal to foster closer European ties away from Russia.
Portnov was later sanctioned by multiple nations, including the EU, Canada and the United States for his role in Yanukovych’s administration.
In 2021, he was placed on America’s sanction list for allegedly “using his influence to buy access and decisions in Ukraine’s courts and undermining reform efforts.”
Portnov was later removed from the EU blacklist — for those who allegedly misappropriate state funds or commit human right violations — as he challenged the sanctions placed upon him.
But it was not immediately clear why or when Portnov moved to Spain.
He reportedly left Ukraine in 2014 and lived in Russia by 2015 before relocating to neighboring Austria. Ukraine’s security service opened an investigation on him in 2018 on suspicions of treason and alleged involvement in Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea but ended it in 2019.
However, a motive behind Wednesday’s deadly shooting is not yet known.
