A former Ukrainian politician who worked as a senior aide to the former pro-Russian president has been shot and killed outside his children’s school in an upmarket suburb of Madrid.
In the latest violence to rattle Spain since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Andriy Portnov was killed on Wednesday morning outside the American School of Madrid in Pozuelo de Alarcón.
Authorities said Portnov, who worked closely with Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Yanukovych, had been targeted when he was getting into his car, a black Mercedes-Benz. “Several people shot him in the back and the head and then fled towards a forested area,” said a source at Spain’s interior ministry.
Local media said Portnov had been dropping off his children at the school, where classes had begun 30 minutes before the shooting. Police sources told El País he had two daughters at the school.