Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest in this interview recorded on the 11th of July is Maria Butina, a member of the Russian Duma,

representing Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party.

Perhaps she's better known to many of her compatriots as the woman who was imprisoned in America for some

15 months, convicted of acting as an unauthorised foreign agent.

Butina's was an unusual story.

She'd gone to America as an ardent advocate of gun rights.

She cultivated links with a number of right-wing political operatives in the run-up to

the 2016 presidential election. She always denied she was a Russian agent. After her release from prison,

Boutina was deported to Moscow, where she built a career in politics and the media. Now,

two and a half years into Russia's full-scale military

assault on Ukraine, she is an enthusiastic advocate for President Vladimir Putin. But his strategy

has embroiled Russia in a protracted and costly conflict with no end in sight. Will that miscalculation

come back to haunt him? Well, Maria Butina joins me now,

on the line from Moscow. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you so much for invited me.

Well, it's a pleasure to have you back on the program. You may remember we last spoke about a month

after Mr. Putin's all-out invasion of Ukraine.

And back then, you said to me you were confident it was all going to plan, even though

you admitted you didn't know what the plan was.

Well, some two and a half years on, are you now ready to acknowledge that it has not gone to plan?

No, I told you last time that I don't know the plan.

So maybe it was planned this way.

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