Ukrainian ex-politician and Yanukovych aide shot dead in Spain
Photo: Andriy Portnov, Member of Parliament of Ukraine of the V - VI convocations (social media)
On the morning of May 21, former Ukrainian politician Andriy Portnov was shot dead near a school in Madrid, Spain, reports Reuters.
RBC-Ukraine sources in the Security and Defense Forces confirmed that Portnov was the deceased.
What we know
Police received a report of a shooting at 8:15 am Kyiv time. An unknown shooter or shooters killed a man at the gates of an American school in the wealthy Pozuelo neighborhood of Madrid.
According to Reuters sources who are close to the investigation, it was Portnov.
Other media outlets report that the former politician was taking his children to school before his death.
More details
According to EL PAIS sources, Portnov was driving a Mercedes before being attacked by two or three assailants. A total of five shots were fired in the head and back. The type of weapon is currently being identified.
According to EL MUNDO, during the shooting, one of the bullets hit the victim's neck, and after he fell to the ground, he was killed by a shot to the head.
“The perpetrator, a tall, thin man, is wanted after he shot the victim and fled through the Casa de Campo,” the newspaper adds.
Who is Andriy Portnov?
Portnov was born on October 27, 1973, in Luhansk. He graduated from the East Ukrainian National University.
In 2006, he became a Member of Parliament of the V convocation from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYT). During the early parliamentary elections, he was re-elected to the Verkhovna Rada on the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc's list and joined the Parliamentary Committee on Justice.
In 2008, he was appointed deputy chairman of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.
Later, he became a member of the Batkivshchyna party and headed the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc's legal department.
In April 2010, he became deputy head of the presidential administration under Serhiy Lyovochkin, but in April 2011 he was laid off and transferred to the position of presidential adviser, head of the main department for the judiciary of the presidential administration.
On January 16, 2013, Portnov was appointed an advisor to the president, and a year later he was appointed first deputy head of the presidential administration.
On February 26, 2014, Portnov was dismissed by a decree of acting president Oleksandr Turchynov. At the end of the same month, the politician fled Ukraine and settled in Russia. Later, he moved to Vienna.
In 2019, Portnov returned to Ukraine but eventually fled again after a full-scale war broke out.
