While Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine rages on, it has been rumoured that some in his inner circle could turn on the Russian President and his "toxic" behaviour.
Western sanctions have put pressure on Russian businesses and isolated the nation on the world stage, ensuring Putin must do all he can to keep his key allies on his side.
But while uncertainty hangs over many in his close circle, one Russian MP, considered incredibly loyal to the President, has not wavered in her support.
Maria Butina, 33, was elected to Parliament in Russia in 2019, after being released from a US prison following a conviction for "spying" - something The Kremlin has always denied.
Speaking to The Times, Butina claimed she is a "peace-builder" who wants to keep up dialogue between Russia and the rest of the world - but her colourful past puts this in doubt.
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Weapon-wielding child
Butina, who was born in the Siberian city of Barnaul in 1988, is reported to have been obsessed with guns throughout her childhood and picked up her first gun when she was 10 years old, the BBC reports.
She became engaged in politics from a young age and was involved in the youth wing of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party.
As a young woman in politics gun rights were her passion and she founded a group called the Right to Bear Arms and campaigned to make it legal for Russian civilians to buy single-barrelled firearms.
Although her campaign ultimately fell flat, Butina picked up the support of Alexander Torshin, a member of the Russian senate who had close ties to the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the US.
By 2016, she had secured a US student visa to study for a master's degree in international relations with a focus on cybersecurity at the University of Washington.
US connections
Through her close relationship with Torshin, Butina began travelling to the US to attend NRA rallies and even appeared at a few Donald Trump rallies.
After attending one of these events in Las Vegas in the summer of 2015, Butina invited NRA officials to a meeting in Moscow in December of that year to meet with "high level Russian government officials."
In 2017 Butina was quoted in the Russian press to have said: "It is important to support Trump morally."
But shortly after a controversial summit between then-US President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July 2018, Butina was arrested.
Eventually the gun-toting activist was charged with trying to "establish unofficial lines of communication" with conservative figures in the Republican Party.
Butina pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 18 months in jail in the US - but was released three months early for good behaviour.
Loyalty to the Kremlin
Despite Butina's guilty plea, the Kremlin maintained her arrest was "politically motivated" and that the charges against her were "fabricated."
Putin even decried her sentence as an "outrage," referring to her as "our Butina."
When she was released from jail in October 2019 and returned to Russia, she landed herself a job working on Russian state TV channel Russia Today.
She also kept up her involvement in politics and used her experience as a prisoner in the US to push her anti-Western narrative.
The New York Times reports Butina visited prominent anti-Putin activist Aleksei Navlany in a Russian penal colony, where she claimed his treatment was nothing compared to her suffering in a US prison.
In 2021, just a few years after her return to Russia, Butina was elected into Parliament representing the Duma region of the country.
Critics of the Kremlin have suggested her seat in Parliament was a "gift" for her activities in the US - something she has denied.
Butina said: "It's not a reward. I wasn't a spy. I wasn't working for the government. I was just a civilian."
False Nazism claims
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Butina has spoken out in support of Putin's efforts, peddling the baseless claim that Russia is ridding the nation of Nazism.
Speaking to The Times, she said: "There is the rebirth of Nazism in Ukraine" and compared Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Hitler.
Butina added that, even though Zelensky is Jewish and had relatives who died in the Holocaust, this doesn't mean he can't be a Nazi.
There are reports that far-right Ukrainian paramilitary group Azov Battalion has been accused of operating under a neo-Nazi ideology - but the group's members are thought to be less than 1,000.
Despite The Kremlin's claims, there is no evidence of mass killings or ethnic cleansing in Ukraine in recent years.
The International Court of Justice and the head of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, have rejected Putin's assertions that there have been mass civilian killings in the Donbas region of Ukraine during the last eight years.
Butina also denied that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine - despite mounting evidence that civilians are being targeted by Russian soldiers and women are being subject to sexual violence in the war.
Despite heavy criticism of Russia's actions from around the world, Butina remains loyal to Putin and the United Russia Party.
She said: "Westerners just don't get Russian mentality."
