MADRID (AP) — Spanish authorities said that an adviser to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was shot dead outside a school in Madrid on Wednesday.
Andrii Portnov, 52, was identified as the victim by Spain’s Interior Ministry. He was shot at 9:15 a.m. local time (0715 GMT), authorities said.
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, police said. The assailants then fled on foot into a wooded area, police said.
Portnov is a former Ukrainian politician closely tied to Yanukovych, having served as deputy head of the presidential office from 2010 to 2014.
During Yanukovych’s presidency, Portnov was widely viewed as a pro-Russia political figure and was involved in drafting legislation aimed at persecuting participants of the 2014 revolution in Ukraine.
After fleeing Ukraine in 2014, Portnov reportedly lived in Russia in 2015 before relocating to Austria. It wasn’t 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, the United States imposed personal sanctions on Portnov, designating him as someone “responsible for or complicit in, or (who) has directly or indirectly engaged in, corruption, including the misappropriation of state assets, the expropriation of private assets for personal gain, corruption related to government contracts or the extraction of natural resources, or bribery.”
