The Interrupted flight: Poklonskaya will not become Russian ambassador to Cape Verde

According to RIA Novosti with reference to the data of the Foreign Ministry, Poklonskaya will not be able to assume the post of ambassador.

“Natalia Poklonskaya’s personal circumstances have changed, and her departure as an ambassador to Cape Verde will not take place for these reasons”, - the message says.

On October 13, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree appointing Natalia Poklonskaya Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia to Cape Verde. Shortly before this, Poklonskaya, together with her daughter, became the owner of an elite apartment in Moscow, the cost of which is estimated at 53 million rubles. The apartment with an area of 119.2 m² is located in the elite complex "Stalin's Dacha" at 12 Starovolynskaya Street. This complex is also called the "house of the president's manager". From it to the Kremlin can be reached in 15 minutes.

Poklonskaya was supposed to arrive at a new duty station before mid-November last year. However, with the departure there was a hitch, which dragged on for several months.

Natalia Poklonskaya served as Prosecutor of the Republic of Crimea from March 2014 to October 2016. Then she was a State Duma deputy, where she served as deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption. Subsequently, she became deputy chairman of the committee on international affairs.

In May 2021, she refused to participate in the United Russia primaries, explaining that she had completed an internship at the Foreign Ministry and courses at the Diplomatic Academy, intending to switch to diplomatic work.

The Ukrainian authorities, who consider the annexation of Crimea to Russia illegal, included Poklonskaya among the wanted persons as an accomplice of the "illegal annexation" of the peninsula, and demanded her extradition from Cape Verde, promising to "get her everywhere, even in Africa." Poklonskaya called the incident "a disregard for the norms of international law".

Shortly after her appointment as ambassador, Poklonskaya twice became a newsmaker on a federal scale. On November 19, she spoke out strongly against the mandatory QR code law, saying that its passage was unconstitutional.

And at the end of November, 40-year-old Poklonskaya committed a completely unexpected and unthinkable act from the point of view of diplomatic ethics, publishing on social networks an erotic video with playful music, filmed in her house in the Crimea.

The video shows how she wakes up in her residence, puts on a translucent robe, brushes her teeth, brews coffee, and then sits on the carpet in the hall and plays with the cat against the background of icons and a portrait of Emperor Nicholas II.

Bloggers are interested in who is filming Poklonskaya in the bedroom, and is this not the first ambassador in the history of world diplomacy to appear in public in such a semi-dressed form that does not correspond to a high official status. At the same time, some commentators recalled a well-known saying, advising the newly minted ambassador in such a situation “either close the icons or put on shorts”.