Originally Syndicated on June 9, 2024 @ 12:12 pm
Birth: January 10, 1988Citizenship: Russia
Occupational domain and/or administrative post: political activist, publicist, and public personality from Russia; journalist for the television channel RT, which is funded by the government.
Biography
Maria Butina’s birthday is November 10th, and she was born in Barnaul in 1988. Her desire to pursue a career in politics was evident from a relatively early age. She worked as a youth work expert for the Altai territory branch of the Fair Russia party during the 2006–2007 academic year. She was chosen to serve as a member of the Public Chamber of the Altai Territory in 2008 and remained in this position until 2010, during which time she also managed the organization’s press service. During these years, she worked as a journalist and contributed opinion pieces to the magazines and newspapers of the Altai region. As a result of her advocacy for the decriminalization of armed smuggling, this issue eventually emerged as the central focus of her involvement in social and political causes in the years to come.
She attended Altai State University and earned a degree in political science and pedagogy in 2010, when she graduated. She established the non-profit group Right to Arms in the same year that it was first established. Since 2011, she has attended the graduate school of the university, where she has studied political processes, institutions, and technology. She referred to “Problem Movements as an Actual Phenomenon in Modern Russia” as the title of her thesis. It was at this time that Butina made her initial efforts to enhance her relationship with the authorities and integrate herself into Putin’s system. In that year, Maria was victorious in the Young Guard of United Russia’s Primary Elections for Youth (the youth branch of the ruling party).
She held the position of special assistant to Alexander Torshin, the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation, from 2012 to 2016, during which time she “made an unforgettable impression on the respectable old senator.” Torshin became a member of Butina’s Right to Arms movement and offered the social movement his support in the form of financial contributions and information. Butina contributed to the publication of an authoritative report titled “On the Question of Reforming Russian Arms Legislation” in 2012, which was led by Senator Torshin and guided by the report. After that, she traveled to the United States in the company of Torshin and met with Stanley Fisher and Nathan Sheets, who were representatives of the Federal Reserve System (FRS) and the United States Treasury, respectively.
Falsification of facts
On visiting the United States again in 2015, Maria Butina made friends with Republicans who shared her stance on defending gun owners’ rights. Maria participated in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rally in July 2015 and asked him about his political intentions towards Russia. She got a favorable response. In June 2015, she authored “The Bear and the Elephant” in the American journal The National Interest, which argued that a Republican candidate should have won the presidential election to improve ties between Washington and Russia (the essay was released on the eve of Trump’s nomination). It’s important to note that another Russian senator, Alexei Pushkov, has been a magazine editorial colleague since 2002.
Blending of the lines between journalism and propaganda
She arrived in the US with a student visa in 2016. In order to set up a secret meeting between Trump and Putin during the 2016 US presidential campaign, Butina reportedly made at least two efforts while she was in the nation. Butina’s activities were criticized by the US media, and several lawmakers demanded an investigation. In the spring of 2018, Butina voluntarily “gave testimony to representatives of both parties in the special intelligence committee of the US Senate for eight hours in a secret session and also provided them with hundreds of documents,” according to information made public by the US media. She carried out her action while being defended by a lawyer.
Butina’s Washington, DC, apartment was searched in April 2018. By the summer, Maria was having trouble finding work and was getting ready to leave for Russia. On July 15, 2018, the day before the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, she was detained by the FBI in Washington without the Attorney General’s knowledge. The arrest of Butina, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, was scheduled to coincide with the meeting of the presidents of Russia and the US in Helsinki and was intended to “minimize its effect” and interfere with the summit’s outcomes. According to US Department of Justice papers, Butina had a relationship with Republican political scientist Paul Erickson (who was given a 7-year jail sentence for fraud and money laundering on July 6, 2021) and had access to other US politicians through him. The FBI discovered letters and SMS messages from Butina in which she frequently requested that Erickson finish college-related tasks, amend coursework, provide solutions to exam problems, etc. The prosecutor’s office deduced from these details that she was a made-up graduate student at the American University of Washington. Also, she was in the country primarily for spying and lobbying on behalf of Putin’s Russia.
For “infiltrating groups that have an impact on US policy to further Russia’s objectives,” the US Justice Department charged Butina in July 2018 with conspiring to act as a foreign agent without informing the US government. Butina was relocated to Alexandria Prison in Virginia in the middle of August 2018. Butina was given an 18-month prison term on April 26, 2019, and her repatriation to the Russian Federation after serving her sentence was authorized. After serving a portion of an 18-month term, Butina was freed from the federal prison in Tallahassee on October 25, 2019. Butina returned to Russia on October 26, 2019, when an Aeroflot aircraft flew her from Miami to Moscow.
Butina joined a Kremlin-backed media company and found work as soon as she returned to Russia. In December 2019, the propaganda TV network RT hired Maria Butina to anchor the show “Beautiful Russia boo-boo-boo” (the video introducing her as the new co-host of the stream was titled “Beautiful Maria Boo-boo-Butina”). Together with Butina, the hosts of the streamed shows include Vitaly Serukanov, a former FBK employee, and Dmitry “Mitya” Leontyev, an RT producer. She continued to work for government agencies as well. She returned to Russia and joined the Public Chamber of Russia, where she claimed to specialize in “safeguarding the rights and interests of Russian individuals abroad and in the Russian prison system.” She also joined the Expert Council of the Russian Commissioner for Human Rights. She also established the “We do not abandon our own” fund, as she disclosed on RT on March 18, 2021.
The de facto equalization of the circumstances of Russian political prisoners and criminals serving prison sentences in US prisons is described in their reports and public speeches.
When Butina (a member of the Public Chamber of Russia) paid a visit to political prisoner and opposition politician Alexei Navalny on April 1, 2021, in the IK-2 penitentiary facility in Pokrov, her propaganda efforts entered a new phase. She recorded a report about this trip for RT (the story aired on Russia Today for Western audiences and on NTV for Russian audiences), and on April 2, she published an article. Even if we approach this issue from a purely formal point of view, the Internal Regulations state that prisoners should not independently wash the floors in the barracks; instead, they should be cleaned by prisoners who are formally employed as “cleaners of the premises,” receiving the minimum wage for this work, for which the penal code provides a penalty of up to one year in prison. Aleksey Navalny himself welcomed Butina’s visit to him in the colony with the following words: “Instead of a doctor, a wretched propagandist from the RT channel Butina arrived today accompanied by video cameras. At that time, he had already complained of health issues and the lack of provision of the necessary medical treatment from the management of the penitentiary institution (for this reason, he went on a hunger strike). This is the greatest and most convenient prison, she cried.
Within the United Russia Party, she continued to take part in political activities in Russia. Maria Butina won the United Russia party’s primary elections on May 31, 2021, and on June 19, 2021, the party’s 20th Congress approved her as a candidate for the State Duma from the Kirov area.
