Andriy Portnov, a former Ukrainian Member of Parliament and member of the erstwhile Yanukovych government was killed by a fatal head-shot outside his children’s school in Madrid on Wednesday.
A former Ukrainian Member of Parliament and Presidential Advisor who has been widely described as “pro-Russian” in media reports following his death but who successfully sued against that description in recent memory, was killed on Wednesday in Spain. National newspaper El Pais states Andriy Portnov had just dropped two of his four children off at school, the exclusive private international American College in a Barcelona neighbourhood when he was approached by two or three men who had arrived by motorcycle.
Five shots were fired at point-blank range and Portnov suffered three wounds, two to the chest and one to the head, which was fatal. Per witnesses — other parents who had also just dropped their children at school — the assassins “finished him off on the ground” before escaping.
No arrests have yet been made. It is stated Spain’s special intelligence police have joined the investigation, suggesting a potential political motive is being considered.
Portnov was an advisor to Ukraine’s pro-Russian ex-President Viktor Yanukovych between 2010 and 2014. Before this time, he had been a lawyer for Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a one-time ally to Yanukovych who later became his rival. Portnov was also a member of the Ukrainian Parliament between 2006 and 2010.
After President Yanukovych was removed from office in 2014 following the Euromaidan uprising, Portnov fled abroad, living in Russia and Austria before later returning to Ukraine. But he left the country again in 2022 after Russia re-invaded Ukraine, claiming he had been the subject of an attempted as assassination. The lawyer and politician has been the subject of several criminal cases and had even been investigated for high treason over alleged involvement in the 2014 Russian occupation of Crimea.
The Kyiv Independent also notes he “was known as one of the most litigious Ukrainian ex-officials”, and successfully challenged the description of being “pro-Russian”, suing a Ukrainian journalist in a Kyiv court in 2024. The government-aligned news outlet called him “hated, tainted, and covertly pro-Russian” in their obituary.
He was sanctioned by the United States in 2021 for alleged corruption relating to government contracts and the expropriation of assets for personal gain.
While not definitely proven that the killing is related to Portnov’s political life, Ukraine or Russia, Spain has certainly been the setting for several slayings linked to the Ukraine War since the Russian re-invasion and a good many pro-Russians have been assassinated during the course of the war. Just months after the war started again in Spring 2022, a Russian oligarch was found hanged and and his family stabbed and slashed to death at a Spanish seaside resort.
In 2024, a Russian helicopter pilot who famously defected to Ukraine in return for cash was shot dead in Spain, where he is believed to have resettled under a new identity.
The modus operandi of assassins arriving and leaving on a motorcycle before disappearing also bears a superficial, at least, resemblance to another attempted political assasination in Spain, that of populist politician Alejo Vidal-Quadras. Like Portnov, Vidal-Quadras was targeted at a known place of routine, his church, and shot point-blank in the head by a motorcycle gunman.
Vidal-Quadras survived and police said the attack bore the hallmarks of a professional “hit”.
