Several attackers today shot and killed Andriy Portnov, a former envoy to Ukraine and advisor to the country's former pro-Russian president, in a luxurious suburb of Madrid.
Portnov (51) was a lawyer, MP and assistant to the chief of administration of President Viktor Yanukovych.
After Yanukovych fled Ukraine to Russia after the bloody suppression of the pro-European demonstrations in 2014, the "Maidan Revolution", Portnov also fled to Russia, then to Austria.
He returned to Ukraine after the election of President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019 and, according to Ukrainian media, thanks to his connections in high circles, he managed to escape again in June 2022, after the start of the Russian invasion, despite a ban on men aged 18 to 60 leaving the country.
Portnov has been under US sanctions for corruption since December 2021, because in 2019 he "bought access to Ukrainian courts" and influenced their decisions, undermined reforms, influenced MPs, tried to appoint officials loyal to him to high positions in the judiciary, and "bought court decisions."
When asked by Agence France-Presse, an official from the Military Intelligence Service of Ukraine (GUR) only confirmed that Portnov had been killed.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukraine has claimed responsibility for or been attributed with multiple assassinations in Russia and the occupied territories of military and political officials and individuals who ideologically support the Russian war.
On the other hand, several similar murders have been linked to Russia, including that of a Russian defector who supported Ukraine, who was killed in February 2024 in Spain, whose intelligence service attributed it to Moscow.
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