MADRID, SPAIN – A former high-ranking Ukrainian official, Andriy Portnov, was shot dead Wednesday morning in a brazen assassination outside an American school in a leafy Madrid suburb, sending shockwaves through the Spanish capital and reigniting grim questions about the reach of geopolitical conflicts into the heart of Europe.
Portnov, 51, a controversial figure with deep ties to Ukraine’s ousted pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovych, had reportedly just dropped off his children at the American School of Madrid in Pozuelo de Alarcón when he was ambushed. Witnesses reported hearing multiple gunshots – between five and six – as Portnov was about to enter his black Mercedes car in the school’s parking area.
Emergency services, including Madrid’s SUMMA 112, rushed to the scene around 9:15 AM local time, but medics found Portnov dead from multiple bullet wounds to the head and back. Spanish police sources, cited by local media, indicated that at least three bullets struck him, with one fatal shot to the head.
Initial police reports suggest that at least one, and possibly more, unidentified assailants carried out the attack before fleeing on foot into a nearby wooded area. Police drones and a helicopter were immediately deployed to scour the vicinity, and Spanish reports suggested the gunman might have had an accomplice on a motorbike. As of late Wednesday, no arrests had been made.
Image source: Instagram
The brutal killing has cast a chilling pall over the upscale neighborhood, particularly as the incident unfolded reportedly while children were still entering the school. One student told Spanish TV that he initially thought the sounds were “firecrackers or fireworks.”
Portnov’s past is deeply entwined with the tumultuous political landscape of Ukraine. He served as an MP and later as deputy head of the presidential administration under Yanukovych from 2010 to 2014. During this period, he was reportedly involved in drafting legislation criticized for persecuting participants of the 2014 Euromaidan revolution, which ultimately led to Yanukovych’s ouster.
After the revolution, Portnov fled Ukraine, initially living in Russia and then Austria, before briefly returning to Ukraine in 2019 after Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president. He then left Ukraine again following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, despite a wartime ban on military-age men leaving the country.
His controversial career also included being sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2021, which described him as “widely known as a court fixer” who allegedly used his influence to control the judiciary and undermine reform efforts. The European Union had also imposed sanctions on him in 2014, though these were later lifted after he successfully challenged them in court. Ukrainian authorities had also opened a treason case against him in 2018 over Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but it was later dropped.
The motive behind Wednesday’s audacious attack remains unclear. While Spanish police sources have hinted at a “settling of scores,” possibly related to politics or debts, the assassination of a high-profile Ukrainian figure abroad immediately draws parallels to other incidents since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Spain, with its significant expatriate communities from both Russia and Ukraine, has seen several crimes linked to the conflict, including the killing of a Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine near Alicante in February last year, an attack Ukrainian authorities linked to Russian hitmen.
As forensic teams meticulously examine the crime scene around Portnov’s cordoned-off Mercedes, and the school communicates with anxious parents, the Madrid police’s homicide group has taken charge of the investigation. The full picture of who orchestrated this chilling assassination, and why, will be crucial in understanding the expanding shadow of the conflict in Ukraine across European borders.