Natalia Poklonskaya

Natalia Vladimirovna Poklonskaya (born 18 March 1980) is a Ukrainian-born Russian lawyer, politician and diplomat.

She has served as the adviser to the Prosecutor General of Russia since 14 June 2022.

Poklonskaya was born 18 March 1980 in the village of Mikhailovka, in the Voroshilovgrad Oblast of what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic; later in 1990, her family moved to Yevpatoria in Crimea.

Her parents are both retired, living in Crimea, and both her grandfathers died during the Second World War, with only her grandmother surviving the German occupation.

In 1987, together with her parents and older sister, she moved to Crimea.

She chose the profession of law enforcement officer in memory of her uncle, who died at the hands of bandits.

Aronov was prosecuted for his leadership role in the Bashmaki gang, an organized crime group that emerged in Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Kyiv after the 1991 dissolution of the USSR.

The gang had been "known for its cruelty" and had been implicated in racketeering, robberies, eight abductions, and 50 murders.

In December of the same year, Poklonskaya was allegedly assaulted in the stairwell of her home in Yalta.

As a result, she suffered partial facial paralysis.

The alleged attack was widely believed to have been a revenge attack by the Bashmaki gang.

Poklonskaya was a Ukrainian prosecutor from 2002 to February 2014, working in various Prosecutor's Offices or as an assistant district attorney.

She graduated from the University of Internal Affairs in Yevpatoria in 2002.

While studying during the summer holidays, together with her sister, she worked as a waitress and bartender at the local cafe Izyuminka.

After her graduation, Poklonskaya worked in the Ukrainian Prosecutor's Office, initially serving as an assistant prosecutor to the Acting Prosecutor of the Republic of Crimea.

She was the assistant attorney of Krasnogvardeisky district in Crimea from 2002 to 2006, and the assistant attorney of Yevpatoria from 2006 to 2010.

Between 2010 and 2011, she was the deputy chief of a surveillance law enforcement unit of the Prosecutor's Office of Crimea.

Between 2010 and 2011, she was the deputy chief of a surveillance law enforcement unit of the Prosecutor's Office of Crimea which was responsible for dealing with organized crime.

In 2011 in Simferopol, she acted as the state prosecutor in the high-profile trial of Ruvim Aronov, a former deputy of the Supreme Council of Crimea and a former manager of the Saki soccer club.

From 2012 to 2014, Poklonskaya served as the Senior Prosecutor of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

From October to December 2012, Poklonskaya worked as head of the prosecution with the proceedings of the Court of Appeal of Crimea.

Later, from December 2012 up until March 2014, she was a senior attorney of the 2nd division of the General Directorate of Internal Affairs involved in pre-trial investigation and public prosecution management supervision with oversight of law enforcement in criminal proceedings.

Previously, she had several political and diplomatic roles, most notably serving as the Prosecutor General of Crimea from 2014 to 2016, and later served as a Deputy of the State Duma of Russia from 2016 to 2021.

Amid the Russian occupation of Crimea, Poklonskaya resigned from Ukrainian service and was appointed Prosecutor General of Crimea on 11 March 2014; a press conference given by Poklonskaya on that day resulted in her becoming an Internet phenomenon.

Poklonskaya's appointment was confirmed by Russian authorities on 25 March, around the same time Ukrainian judicial authorities declared her a wanted criminal due to alleged involvement in conspiracy to overthrow constitutional order or seize state power.

She was the youngest female general in Russia, aged 36 at the time of her resignation.

In 2015, Poklonskaya announced that she would be running as an MP in the State Duma for the United Russia party, and she was elected during the 2016 Russian legislative election.

In office, Poklonskaya served as deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs.

She did not stand for re-election during the 2021 Russian legislative election, and was that year appointed Russian Ambassador to Cape Verde.

From February to June 2022, Poklonskaya served as deputy head of Rossotrudnichestvo.

In June 2022, she was appointed Advisor to the Prosecutor General of Russia.

On December 9, 2019, she reported that the information about the beating was not true, saying that “the story that someone beat me up at the entrance is not true."

As a state prosecutor in the case of the Bashmaki gang, she was poisoned during a business trip to Odesa.

Poklonskaya described the situation as follows: “I drank a bottle of ordinary water at the hotel when I was on a business trip in Odesa.

There was an unknown substance in the water.

At the hotel, there was water on the nightstand, as usual.

It happened at night - nausea, intestinal and stomach upset.

A wild headache, my head was splitting to such an extent that I wanted to die.” Subsequently, the unidentified substance was removed from the body; after the poisoning, Poklonskaya filed a report, telling the manager that she would no longer be able to work on this matter.

In the same year, she was appointed the inter-district environmental prosecutor of Simferopol.

Following that, she was transferred to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office in Kyiv, where she served as a senior prosecutor.