Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a former Ukrainian politician on Wednesday morning outside a school in a wealthy suburb of Madrid, Spain's Interior Ministry said.

Police received a call about the shooting of a Ukrainian citizen at 9.15 a.m. (0715 GMT) local time outside the elite American School of Madrid, located in Pozuelo de Alarcon, Madrid police told Reuters.

"Several persons shot him in the back and the head and then fled towards a forested area," an Interior Ministry source said.

The victim, Andriy Portnov, 51, was a senior aide to Ukraine's pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovich who was ousted in a 2014 popular uprising.

Portnov left for Russia the same year and has faced investigations in Ukraine over accusations of treason and embezzlement, as well as international sanctions, although the charges and EU sanctions were later dropped.

The U.S. Treasury Department put Portnov on its sanctions list in 2021, saying that he had "cultivated extensive connections to Ukraine's judicial and law enforcement apparatus through bribery".

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there have been several high-profile crimes involving Russians and Ukrainians in Spain, which has significant expatriate populations from both countries.

In 2022, six letter bombs were sent to targets around Spain, including to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, the Ukrainian and U.S. embassies, and government offices. A retired Spanish civil servant whose social media searches suggested sympathy for Russia was jailed for the offences.

In February 2024, a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine with his helicopter was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds in the parking garage of his apartment block near Alicante.