The former Ukrainian president’s advisor was killed outside the school in Spain – Watani

The Spanish authorities said that a consultant for former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovic died on Wednesday when the militants targeted him outside the American school in Madrid.

Andrei Portnov, 51, was identified as a victim by the Ministry of Interior in Spain. The authorities said that he was shot at 9:15 am local time (0715 GMT), after apparently left his children.

Police said that Portnov had shot “several times” in the head and body by more than one gunman when he was entering his car, which is the black Mercedes Benz. Then the attackers fled on foot.

Madrid’s emergency services said he was found dead when the paramedics arrived with at least three shots for his body.

A former Ukrainian politician Portnov is closely related to Yanukovych, where the Vice President of the Presidential Office worked from 2010 to 2014.

During Yanukovic’s presidency, Portnov was widely seen as a political figure supporting Russia and participated in formulating legislation aimed at persecuting the participants in the 2014 revolution in Ukraine.

Louis Raio, 19, who lives in a building next to the school, said he was asleep when he heard the shooting.

Rayo said: “I heard five bullets and then came here to see what happened,” Rayo said.

The police cordoned off a crime scene in a parking lot, about 150 meters (500 feet) outside the American school gate in Madrid, which is located in the upscale Bozulu de Alarun neighborhood, north of the city center.

Parents told the Associated Press that Portnov had children studying at private school. The school refused to confirm whether his children joined.

Timor Iukour, 17, said he was 20 minutes from his first studies of the day when he and his colleagues heard the shooting. A few minutes later, school officials told the students that a man had been shot and announced his death abroad.

“I thought it was an exercise,” said Ayoukor, in the eleventh grade, of the initial announcement. “I was worried because at first I thought it might be one of the parents for a person I knew.”

Going now

• Canada Post Strike: Here is still being delivered at work stopping

• Trump’s tariff creates “tensions” between the G7 before the summit: Champagne

His mother, Elena Ayoukor, originally from Azerbaijan, said that she knows the victim through the Russian community even though she did not know him well.

“I did not know that there were Ukrainian politicians there,” Ayokour said, adding that the victim had a son in the fourth grade.

“I was shocking, like how this can happen here?” Iukour said.

After escaping from Ukraine in 2014, according to what Portnov lived in Russia in 2015 before moving to Austria. It was not immediately clear when he moved to Spain.

In 2018, the security ceremony in Ukraine, or SBU opened an investigation against it on suspicion of betraying the state, claiming that it was involved in annexing the illegal of Russia in the Crimea. The criminal case was closed in 2019.

In 2021, the United States imposed personal sanctions on Portnov, as he was appointed as a person “responsible for or collusion, or (from) directly or indirectly participated in corruption, including the embezzlement of government assets, the confiscation of private assets to achieve personal gains, corruption related to government contracts, natural resources extraction, or goods.”

–Joseph Wilson mentioned Barcelona, ​​Spain. Elia Novikov contributed to this report from Kyiv, Ukraine.

And copied 2025 Canadian press