The life of Ukrainian lawyer Andrii Portnov in Madrid was short and ended with the five bullets in the back that he received Wednesday at the gates of his children’s school in the Spanish capital. Portnov wielded significant influence in Ukraine, where he was an advisor to the former anti-European and pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. He settled in a mansion in the luxury residential area of La Moraleja with his family after leaving Kyiv in June 2022, when he was 48 years old. That is, he crossed the border four months after the Russian invasion began, and when theoretically there were already travel restrictions in place for men of military age under martial law.
In interviews he gave to the media afterwards, he justified his hasty departure as a “father of a large family.” He has four young children with his wife, Anastasia Valyaeva, who was also linked to the former Ukrainian government.
Little is known at the moment about Portnov’s life and his links in Madrid, where detectives are now following the trail of the assassins who presumably arrived on a motorcycle, shot him at point-blank range, and then fled in the groves of the Casa de Campo park, a former royal hunting estate. However, Ukrainian investigators and journalists from the RadioFreeEurope corporation, who have followed his movements closely, point out that Petrov carried out some striking financial and property movements from Madrid. For example, a few months ago, he went to a notary’s office in the capital to register a mansion he owned on the outskirts of Kyiv, in Kozyn, on the banks of the Dnipro River, valued at $2.8 million, in the name of his children. The same sources point out that he could have been trying to “hide real estate or avoid its confiscation in the event of sanctions or criminal prosecution.”
In the face of escalating tensions and on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion, in December 2021, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on Portnov, including a ban on entry to the U.S. and the freezing of all his financial assets in U.S. banks. Portnov was also included in the list of persons affected by the so-called Magnitsky Act, passed in the United States, which prosecutes foreigners accused of large-scale corruption and human rights violations. But, curiously, his daughters went to the American School of Madrid, in the Madrid suburb of Pozuelo de Alarcón, where he himself took them daily.
Portnov has for years maintained an open battle with his detractors in Ukraine, initiating court proceedings against journalists and those who have attacked him for his closeness to the Russian government and his anti-European ideas, and who linked him to repressive actions in that sense. However, he won all the lawsuits. Those court victories also gave him a reputation for exerting a strong influence over the judiciary in Ukraine. Until 2014, Portnov was responsible for the judiciary in Yanukovych’s government.
After the Euromaidan protests at the end of 2013, with serious riots in Kyiv’s Independence Square against the strengthening of ties with Russia vis-à-vis European alliances, Portnov began also to set up in Moscow, where he accumulated significant property assets.
The murder of the Ukrainian lawyer in Madrid is surrounded by a mesh of political influence, money and power. Late on Wednesday, the police were engaged in a “delicate investigation,” but the motivations behind the crime were still far from clear.
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