Ukrainian ex-top official shot useless exterior Madrid college

[ad_1] A former main Ukrainian official has been shot useless exterior an American college within the Spanish capital Madrid, authorities have confirmed.

Andriy Portnov, 51, had simply dropped his kids off on the college within the Pozuelo de Alarcón space of town.

A minimum of one unidentified attacker fired a number of photographs on the sufferer earlier than fleeing right into a wooded space in a close-by public park, witnesses mentioned.

Portnov had been an MP and deputy head within the administration of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president ousted in 2014 after months of protests.

He had beforehand been an MP in Yulia Tymoshenko's governing occasion.

He left Ukraine after the revolution solely to return in 2019 after Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president.

He then left Ukraine once more, and in 2021 was sanctioned by the US Treasury, which mentioned he had been "extensively generally known as a court docket fixer" who had taken steps to regulate the judiciary and undermine reform efforts.

The European Union had earlier imposed sanctions on Portnov, however he challenged the transfer in court docket and gained the case.

It was not clear who was behind the taking pictures that happened at about 09:15 native time (07:15 GMT) on Wednesday, reportedly as kids have been nonetheless coming into the varsity.

Police drones and a helicopter searched the realm for a gunman who, in keeping with witnesses, was a skinny man in a blue tracksuit. Spanish stories steered the gunman could have had not less than one confederate using on a bike.

The same gun assault happened in 2018, when a Colombian drug trafficker was fatally shot exterior a British Council college a couple of kilometres away.

However the motive behind Wednesday's assault shouldn't be but identified. Emergency companies on the scene might solely affirm that that Portnov had suffered a number of bullet wounds within the again and the pinnacle.

Portnov's black Mercedes automobile was cordoned off and the varsity wrote to folks to substantiate that every one the scholars inside have been protected.

Though Ukraine's intelligence companies have been linked to a number of killings in Russia and occupied areas of Ukraine, a deadly assault in Spain in February final 12 months was linked to Russian hitmen.

The sufferer, a Russian helicopter pilot, was shot useless close to Alicante, months after defecting to Ukraine.

Authorities in Kyiv mentioned they'd supplied to guard Maxim Kuzminov in Ukraine, however he's believed to have moved to Spain's south-east coast beneath a false id.