A former leading Ukrainian official was shot dead outside an American school in the Spanish capital Madrid, according to reports.
The 51 -year -old man, appointed by Ukrainian and Spanish sources under the name of Andriy Portnov, had just dropped off his children at school in the town of Alarcón de la Ville, according to reports.
At least an unidentified attacker fired several shots on the victim before fleeing in a wooded area in a nearby public park, according to Spanish reports.
Portnov had been deputy and deputy chief of the administration of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president ousted in 2014 after months of demonstrations.
He had previously been a deputy for the ruling party of Yulia Tymoshenko.
He left Ukraine after the revolution to return in 2019 after Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president.
He then left Ukraine again and, in 2021, was sanctioned by the US Treasury, who declared that he had been “widely known as the court fixer” which had taken measures to control the efforts of judicial reform and undermined.
The European Union had previously imposed sanctions in Portnov, but he challenged this decision to court and won the case.
It was not clear who was at the origin of the shooting which took place around 9:15 am local time (07:15 GMT) Wednesday, apparently while the children entered the school.
Police drones and a helicopter searched the area for a shooter who, according to witnesses, was a thin man in a blue combination. Spanish relationships suggested that the shooter may have at least an accomplice through a motorcycle.
A similar gun attack took place in 2018, when a Colombian drug dealer was fatally killed outside a British council school a few kilometers away.
But the reason behind Wednesday’s attack is not yet known. Emergency services at the scene could only confirm that Portnov had undergone several bullet injuries in the back and head.
The Mercedes Noire de Portnov car was completed and the school wrote to the parents to confirm that all the students inside were safe.
Although Ukraine’s intelligence services have been linked to several murders in Russia and have occupied regions of Ukraine, a fatal attack in Spain in February from last year was linked to Russian hithers.
The victim, a Russian helicopter pilot, was killed near Alicante, months after defection against Ukraine.
Kyiv authorities said they had proposed to protect Maxim Kuzminov in Ukraine, but he would have moved to the south-eastern coast of Spain under a false identity.
