The U.S. Senate seeks to impose additional sanctions on Russia.

Andri Portnov, deputy chief of the Ukrainian presidential administration under the chairmanship of Viktor Ianoukovitch, was killed by bullets this morning in Pozuelo de Alarcon, near Madrid, in front of the school of his children, reports the France-Presse Agency (AFP), Reuters, Associated Press (AP), and several media outlets, including Spanish news sources.

“The victim had several shots when he was about to get into a car. Several people pulled him in the back and head before fleeing in a wooded area,” a police source explained to AFP.

The American agency recalls that, under the chairmanship of Mr. Ianoukovitch, Andri Portnov “was widely considered as a prorussian political figure and participated in the development of laws aimed at persecuting the participants in the 2014 Revolution in Ukraine.” After the fall of the Viktor Ianoukovitch regime, Mr. Portnov had lived in Russia, then in Austria, before returning to Ukraine after the election of Volodymyr Zelensky as president in 2019.

According to Ukrainian media, he managed, thanks to his connections in the high spheres of power, to flee in June 2022, after the start of the Russian invasion, despite the ban on leaving the country for men aged 18 to 60 years old.

Andri Portnov has been under U.S. sanctions since December 2021 for acts of “corruption.” According to the American Treasury, he had been involved in “building a vast network of relations within the Ukrainian judiciary and police thanks to corruption.”

According to Cadena Ser, he was also “the subject of an investigation for ‘high betrayal’ because of his supposed role during the invasion of Crimea by Russia.” The AP highlights that this case was classified in 2019.

Reuters also notes that, since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, “Several crimes involving Russian and Ukrainian personalities have been committed in Spain, where there is a significant expatriate population from the two countries.”