Russia Ukraine war, page-4352

Maria Valeryevna Butina (Russian: Мария Валерьевна Бутина, sometimes transliterated as Mariya Butina; born November 10, 1988) is a Russian political activist and former entrepreneur who was convicted in 2018 of acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia within the United States.^[1][2][3]
Beginning in 2011, she worked as an assistant for Aleksandr Torshin, a former member of the Federation Council, a member of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, and a deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia.^[4] In this role, she worked to infiltrate conservative groups in the US, including the National Rifle Association, as part of an effort to promote Russian interests in the 2016 United States presidential election.^[4][5][6] The Senate Intelligence Committee later concluded that she attempted to persuade the Trump campaign to establish a secret communications back channel with Russia.^[7]
In July 2018, while residing in Washington, D.C., Butina was arrested by the FBI and charged with acting as an agent of the Russian Federation "without prior notification to the Attorney General."^[8] In December 2018, she pleaded guilty to felony charges of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent of the Russian state under 18 U.S.C. §951.^{[9][10][11][12][13]} In April 2019, a federal judge sentenced her to 18 months in prison.^[14] She served more than 5 months in Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution, as well as nearly 9 months of her pretrial prison term^[15] since arrest, which were counted, and was released in October 2019, and deported back to Russia.^[16] She denied accusations that she was a Russian agent.^[17] In 2021, she was elected to the State Duma as a member of United Russia.