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 assaulted in the stairwell of her home in Yalta. As a result, she suffered partial facial paralysis. The attack is widely believed to have been a revenge attack by the Bashmaki gang. 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. 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. On 25 February 2014, Poklonskaya handed in her resignation, in which she stated that she was "ashamed to live in the country where neo-fascists freely walk about the streets" (a reference to radical Euromaidan activists). The resignation was not accepted. Instead, she was given a vacation and left Kyiv for Crimea where her parents lived. Prosecutor of Crimea On 11 March 2014, after Russian annexation of Crimea, Poklonskaya was appointed Prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Poklonskaya was appointed to the position by Sergei Aksyonov after the position had been reportedly rejected by four others, including the former Vice-Prosecutor of Crimea, Vyacheslav Pavlov. Her previous criticism of the opposition protests in Ukraine, and the "anti-constitutional coup" led the Ukrainian government to launch a criminal case against her and strip her of the civil service rank of Counsellor of Justice. For her part, Poklonskaya refers to the change of power in Ukraine as an "unconstitutional coup and armed seizure of power", and called Ukraine's new parliamentarians "devils from the ashes." Immediately following her appointment as Prosecutor, she was involved in an investigation into the violent attacks committed against Crimean Berkut members. On 19 March 2014, Poklonskaya confirmed that investigations were ongoing into a shooting in Simferopol which killed two while denying reports that the shooter had been detained. She compared the shooting to the "sniper attacks on Independence Square in Kyiv" from 18 to 21 February, and