Convicted Russian operative released from federal prison to US Immigration and Customs for deportation News
© WikiMedia (Pavel Starikov)
Convicted Russian operative released from federal prison to US Immigration and Customs for deportation

Maria Butina, the Russian operative convicted and sentenced on one count of conspiracy, has finished her 18-month sentence in a Florida federal prison and was released Friday into custody of the US Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement for immediate deportation.

Butina, now 31 years old and a former American University graduate student, was charged in July 2018 with conspiring to influence American politics as an unregistered agent of foreign government.

Butina pleaded guilty in federal court last December to the single conspiracy charge—the second charge of acting as an unregistered foreign agent dropped pursuant to the plea deal—and was sentenced in April by a federal judge to 18 months in prison with credit for the time she had already served while awaiting sentencing.

The federal sentencing memo defined Butina as “not a spy in the traditional sense,” but stated “something as basic as the identification of people who have the ability to influence policy in a foreign power’s favor is extremely attractive to those powers” and could be “the basis of other forms of intelligence operations, or targeting, in the future.”

Butina’s sentencing was one of the first against a foreign operative surrounding the ongoing investigations and speculations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections.

Following her release Friday evening from the Florida federal prison, Butina boarded a flight from Miami to Moscow, where she spoke Saturday to family and journalists, proclaiming “Russians don’t give up.”