“Several persons shot him in the back and the head and then fled toward a forested area,” Reuters quoted an unnamed supply on the Spanish Inside Ministry as saying.
There was no rapid affirmation of the slain man’s id by Spain’s Nationwide Police or different authorities, and no indication of a motive or any suspects who might need been recognized. Witnesses advised Spanish media that a minimum of one attainable suspect was seen working into a close-by wooded space.
Cops are seen subsequent to a physique, reportedly that of ex-Ukraine politician Andriy Portnov, in entrance of the American College in Pozuelo de Alarcon, Madrid, Could 21, 2025.
OSCAR DEL POZO/AFP/Getty
Portnov was a senior support to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, a pro-Russian chief who was ousted throughout the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014. That ouster introduced Ukraine’s present, Western-backed authorities to energy, and it infuriated Russia, which launched its first, preliminary invasion of Ukrainian territory that very same yr, shortly culminating within the unilateral annexation of Crimea.
Portnov was a lawyer, and his political opponents in Ukraine had accused him of serving to construct a authorized framework to allow the previous authorities in Kyiv to crack down on protesters throughout the 2014 pro-democracy rebellion.
Portnov continued dwelling in Ukraine after the 2014 revolution, regardless of his shut ties with the Yanukovich administration, till he left the nation in 2022, based on the Radio Freedom Ukraine community.
In 2021, Portnov was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Division beneath the Magnitsky Act, an American legislation designed to focus on overseas people implicated in corruption and human rights abuses.
Then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, left, is seen with the deputy head of his presidential administration, Andriy Portnov, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Aug. 2, 2010.
Stringer/REUTERS
The U.S. authorities accused him of getting “cultivated extensive connections to Ukraine’s judicial and law enforcement apparatus through bribery,” and mentioned he had been “credibly accused of using his influence to buy access and decisions in Ukraine’s courts and undermining reform efforts.”
“As of 2019, Portnov took steps to control the Ukrainian judiciary, influence associated legislation, sought to place loyal officials in senior judiciary positions, and purchase court decisions,” the Treasury mentioned.
There have been a sequence of crimes in Spain seemingly associated to the Russia-Ukraine conflict since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Late that very same yr, a sequence of letter bomb assaults focused high-profile establishments together with the Ukrainian and U.S. embassies in Madrid and the Spanish Protection Ministry. In early 2024, Maxim Kuzminov, a Russian pilot who had defected to Ukraine, was killed close to Alicante, in southeast Spain.
