Unidentified gunmen have shot and killed a former Ukrainian politician, Andriy Portnov, outside a school in an upmarket suburb of Madrid.

The killing of Portnov, who had worked as a senior aide to Ukraine’s pro-Russia former president, Viktor Yanukovych, took place on Wednesday morning outside the American School of Madrid in Pozuelo de Alarcón.

Authorities said he had been targeted when he was getting into his car, a black Mercedes-Benz. “Several persons shot him in the back and the head and then fled towards a forested area,” said a source at Spain’s interior ministry. Local media said Portnov had been dropping off his children at the school, where classes had begun 30 minutes before the shooting.