Born as Mariia Valeryevna Butina in the Siberian city of Barnaul on 10 November 1988, Maria Butina grew up in the Siberian Taiga, where she was introduced to guns by her father, who taught her to hunt. After studying Political and Educational Science at the Altai State University in Barnaul, she also earned a degree in teaching and at the tender age of 19, was elected to the Public Council of Altai Krai in the last direct election for the council as a young woman of 19.While her mother was an engineer, her father was the owner of a furniture manufacturing business in Barnaul and following the steps of her father, she launched a furniture retail business in Altai Krai at the age of 21.

However, Maria sold six of her seven furniture stores in 2011 and moved to Moscow to start an advertising agency. During the same year, she participated in the Youth Primaries, organized by the Young Guard, known as the youth wing of the United Russia Party of Vladimir Putin. For promoting gun rights, she also founded a group called the Right to Bear Arms and called for the sale of short-barreled firearms to civilians to be made legal. From that time onwards, Maria Butina began traveling back and forth to the US, initially with Russian politician Aleksandr Torshin.

During that time, Torshin was a Senator in the Federation Council of Russia and had close ties to the NRA, the National Rifle Association of America. Maria became his special assistant and lobbied with him to the council to expand gun rights. However, in late 2014, she resigned from her position as the head of Right to Bear Arms, which was considered by many as a front organization, with the ultimate purpose of infiltrating American groups and forging cooperation with the NRA.

Maria Butina met 56-year-old Paul Erickson, a South Dakota-based Republican political operative in Russia in 2013. Soon they became close enough to start dating and eventually moved in together. Erickson, the political activist, nearly twice the age of Maria, had a speckled past that ranged from the producing a 1980s anti-communist film, a spokesman for John Wayne Bobbitt and a lobbyist for a notorious African dictator.

In 2015 he received an Email from Maria, containing the details of a proposed project to influence the Republican Party to be friendlier to Russia, through the NRA. During the month of December in the same year Maria invited the NRA officials to Moscow to attend a meeting with high-level Russian government officials. In the same year, she also attended a Donald Trump campaign event in Las Vegas and asked the presidential candidate about his views and opinion on US sanctions on Russia.

Equipped with a student visa, Maria again moved to the United States in August 2016 and enrolled as a graduate student in International Relations at the American University in Washington DC. By that time, she started a business in South Dakota, along with Erickson, supposedly to provide her monetary assistance for studies in the States, in case of need. She hosted her birthday party at Cafe Deluxe in DC on 14 November 2016, attended by Erickson and Trump campaign aides, claiming to be part of Russian communications with the Trump campaign, something she had been boasting about for the last few months.

So far, so good and apparently it was the story of an aspiring young lady from Siberia. However, in the meantime something was brewing at the backstage. On 11 August 2017, the Senate Intelligence Committee instructed the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence to provide them the records of the dubious transaction, involving investments of Maria Butina, Aleksandr Torshin and Paul Erickson in two particular companies, named Investing with Dignity and Bridges LLC. It is to be noted here that, Paul Erickson was the sole owner of the first company and joint owner of the second, with Maria Butina.

Later, it was alleged that while he was working with Maria Butina, Erickson was in financial crisis, as he had to spend lots of money for meeting the influential political and business leaders, ahead of the 2016 presidential election. He also had to make sufficient arrangements of money to bring Marie from Russia to South Dakota, where she spoke at the University of South Dakota, along with a school in Sioux Falls and at a teenage Republican event in 2015. At the same time, Maria was photographed by the Federal agents in January 2018, while she was while dining with Oleg Zhiganov, the director of the Russian Cultural Center, who was expelled from the States in March as a suspected Russian spy.

After that, the story started to change colour quickly, when the FBI agents in tactical gear searched Maria’s apartment on 25 April, Maria graduated in May from the American University in Washington, DC and in June, Maria offered her assistance to the prosecutors in an investigation of Paul Erickson.

However, Maria Butina was arrested by the FBI from her DC apartment on 15 July 2018 and charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the Russian Federation, without prior notification to the Attorney General and working to infiltrate politically influential organizations in the States and influence the US officials. It was also alleged that beginning in 2014, she urged the Americans to hold gun rights demonstrations.

Actually, her charges largely stemmed from her links to Alexander Torshin, one of the members of the influential gun-lobby and it was alleged that she was directed by and worked with him. Torshin was put under sanctions in the US and was investigated over the allegations that he funnelled money to the National Rifle Association of America to gain influence of the Republicans. It was alleged that in 2015, Maria Butina emailed her lover Erickson, a project proposal called diplomacy, which was all about using the NRA links to influence the foreign policy of the Republican Party and their traditionally hostile attitude toward Russia.

As she pleaded not guilty at a preliminary hearing, Maria Butina was ordered by the Judge on 18 July 2018 to be held without bail pending trial. However, on 13 December 2018, Maria Butina pleaded guilty in a DC federal court for attempting to infiltrate the US Conservative Movement and influence US policy, as an agent for the Kremlin. In addition to that, she confessed that under the direction of Torshin, she worked with Paul Erickson to forge bonds with NRA officials and conservative leaders. Ridiculously, retaliating the issue, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman in Moscow remarked that, Maria Butina was constrained to confess under tremendous pressure and threatening and she was forced to sign up to some absolutely absurd charges.

Maria Butina is the first Russian national convicted of intending to influence US policy in the run-up to the 2016 election by acting as a foreign agent. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison on 26 April 2018, by a federal judge. Before she was released and deported back to Russia on 25 October 2019, she served more than 5 months in the Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution.