Andriy Portnov, a former top Ukrainian politician and government official, has been shot dead on the streets of Madrid, Spain.
Portnov served as an aide to a former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.
He was shot and killed in Madrid on Wednesday morning, local authorities have said.
Unidentified gunmen shot the 51-year-old former politician outside the gates of the American School of Madrid in the Pozuelo area of the Spanish capital.
According to police investigators, Portnov was on a school run when he was executed in broad daylight.
“Several persons shot him in the back and the head,” according to an Interior Ministry official.
The shooters then “fled towards a forest area.”
Police received the report at 7.15 am local time and rushed to Calle America.
Radio station Cadena SER said Portnov is believed to have been taking his children to school.
Emergency service vehicles and a police cordon were pictured at the scene.
Portnov served as a senior aide to Ukraine’s Yanukovich before he was ousted in 2014.
The pro-Russian leader was driven out by Ukraine’s 2014 Orange Revolution.
Yanukovich has been living in exile in Russia ever since.
After fleeing Ukraine in 2014, Portnov is believed to have lived briefly in Russia before moving to Austria.
It is not known when he moved to Spain.
Ukraine’s secret security service opened a state treason investigation into him in 2018.
He was accused of being involved in Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
However, the probe was closed in 2019.
Portnov was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2021.
He was designated as someone “responsible for or complicit in, or (who) has directly or indirectly engaged in, corruption, including the misappropriation of state assets, the expropriation of private assets for personal gain, corruption related to government contracts or the extraction of natural resources, or bribery.”
Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, crimes have been committed against several high-profile Russians and Ukrainians in Spain.
The country has large ex-pat populations from both countries.
In November and December 2022, six letter bombs were sent to targets across the country.
Bombs were sent to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, the Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid, as well as its U.S. counterpart.
A 76-year-old retired Spanish civil servant was jailed over the offences after his social media searches suggested he was sympathetic towards Russia’s invasion.
In April that year, a Russian businessman linked to the country’s Novatek gas company was found dead with his wife and daughter.
They had all sustained stab wounds.
In February last year, a Russian pilot who defected to the Ukrainian side was found dead with gunshot wounds in the car park of his apartment near Alicante.
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