Agents from the Homicide group of the Madrid Police Headquarters have arrested in Germany the alleged murderer of the Ukrainian lawyer Andrei Portonov, 52, shot at point-blank range at the exit of his daughters’ school in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid) on May 21, 2025. Currently, the agents are carrying out searches in the city of Heinsberg, on the border with Holland, where the alleged hitman has been located.
Agents from Homicide Group Five of the Madrid Police Headquarters have traveled to the German city where the arrest took place, with the collaboration of the Special Operations Group of the German BKA. The investigations carried out so far indicate that the arrested person would be the person who fired the shots at the doors of the educational center. The judicial proceedings are carried out by the Investigative Court number 1 of Pozuelo de Alarcón, in Previous Proceedings declared secret.
Portnov, advisor to former president Viktor Yanukovych, anti-European and pro-Russian, settled with his family in Madrid after leaving Ukraine four months after the Russian invasion, in June 2022. He settled in an urbanization within a luxury residential complex with his children and his wife, Anastasia Valyaeva, who was also linked to the Ukrainian Government.
The investigation into his lifestyle carried out by the National Police investigators and previously carried out by his murderers, led the agents to conclude that, “on occasion, he took people he trusted with him to provide security service.” However, he did not have professional bodyguards, as was evident the day he was shot.
The fact that Portnov did not have a permanent bodyguard service, but instead occasionally used people he trusted to protect himself, indicates that he felt quite safe in the capital, where apparently few people knew he resided. However, last year he made a mistake. He wanted to name a mansion, valued at 2.5 million euros, that he owned on the outskirts of kyiv, in the town of Kozyn, in the name of his four children. A beautiful house with a large estate, on the banks of the Dnieper River. To do this, he went to a notary office in Madrid that later sent the documentation to Ukraine where the matter was formalized through his lawyer, Marina Parinova, according to RadioFreeEurope media. That financial operation revealed his location.
Among his routines was taking his daughters to the American School himself, a center where children of diplomats, soccer players and wealthy people in general also study. His attackers, after analyzing his movements, must have considered that this was the moment of greatest vulnerability for their target and the place where they could best guarantee escape. Portnov thought he found his refuge and that of his family in Madrid. His apparent sense of security contrasts with the circumstances of his murder, which has led some to think about the possibility that the shots came from “friendly fire.”
There were nine shots fired at close range. Nine shots fired by a single attacker with a single weapon. One of them graceful, with the victim already on the ground. Finished at the nape of the neck. The attacker wanted to make sure he died. A murder in broad daylight, on a public street, in a matter of seconds: “Five seconds for the first eight shots and one more to finish him lying on the sidewalk,” estimate the experts of the National Police. Nine shell casings on the ground that reveal the ammunition used by the hitman.
Since then, the police have been searching for the shooter and two more possible accomplices who, after committing their crime, hid among the trees of the Casa de Campo. Investigators believe that they did not flee on a motorcycle, as initially reported, or on the subway, but rather in a vehicle that they had planned for this purpose.
A crime carried out by hitmen that is reminiscent of other similar murders that have been recorded in Spain within the framework of the escalation of tension and the war between Ukraine and Russia. Between November and December 2022, six letter bombs were sent to targets including the President of the Government, the Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid, government offices, a European satellite company and the US Embassy. A 75-year-old retired Spaniard, whose online searches suggested sympathy for Russia, was convicted of these events.
In April 2022, Russian tycoon Sergei Protosenya, 55, was found dead in an apparent suicide with his wife and daughter in Lloret de Mar (Girona) where they were spending a few days on vacation, as he was residing in France. And, in February 2024, the body of the Russian pilot Maxim Kuzminov was found with six shots in his body in Vila Joiosa (Alicante). He had supposedly deserted with his combat helicopter to surrender to the Ukrainian Army.
