Russian agent in the United States Maria Butina released from prison and deported to her homeland

Russian Maria Butina, who was serving a prison sentence in the United States, flew to Moscow. On Friday, October 25, she was released from prison and handed over to immigration officers. Writes about this with the BBC.

Photo: Facebook / mariavbutina

At Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, a Russian woman was met by her father Valery Butin and official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova.

At the exit for those who met at Sheremetyevo Airport Terminal D, Butina was also expected by several dozen journalists. Some correspondents of federal channels even brought flowers.

As a result, everyone who left the international arrivals hall through the customs control zone was greeted by a crowd of journalists. Some passengers were embarrassed and even tried to go back to the “sterile area” of the airport.

Butina left the sliding doors of the customs control zone around noon with her father and Zakharova.

“I'm very, very happy to be back home. I am very grateful to everyone who supported me and who spent money on my defense. Thank you very much to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the diplomats who fought for me, made their way to all places, did and are doing everything they can. Thanks to all public organizations. Guys, I didn’t give up only because I knew: I don’t have the right, I just can’t,” Butina said, and then added: “I already said in one of the videos that Russians don’t give up.”

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Then her father spoke. He read out his statement on the phone and thanked the Foreign Ministry, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs Leonid Slutsky and Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova.

“It was one of the shortest briefings in my life, but one of the happiest,” Maria Zakharova summed up after Butina’s father’s speech. “And now - to the family.”

Butina eventually did not answer any questions from journalists. At the sight of a dozen cameras, he and his father got into the car and drove away.

Maria Zakharova answered media questions. She said that the American system did “everything to make a person break.” At the same time, she noted that Butina a huge amount of time was in solitary confinementand she needed support.

Zakharova emphasized that she was struck by the absence of a “shadow of decadence” in Butina during the entire year and a half of her imprisonment.

An employee of the Russian Embassy in Washington, who visited Butina in prison, Mikhail Goncharov told reporters that the decision to plead guilty and make a deal with the investigation was given to the Russian woman very hard.

“It wasn’t easy for her, but the decision was her own and quite conscious. It was needed to get out early. Maria thought for a long time, decided for a long time,” he explained.

Maria Butina also spoke about her detention in a Washington prison, where she was during pre-trial detention. Writes about this TASS.

“Absolutely everyone hated me. It was especially scary in the Washington prison. They showed programs on TV where they chose my most terrible photographs. They made some kind of TV show out of it. I couldn’t even turn it off, meaning I was forced to watch. It was very difficult,” she said.

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According to the Russian woman, at first she was not shown the news. “In the first days, I think I simply couldn’t stand it. Then, when our diplomats began to bring reports, they wrote about me. For me it was very strong support. It was a breath of fresh air in the horror I was in,” Butina said.

About four months the Russian woman spent in solitary confinement. According to the girl, there she was saved by a tough schedule, sport and faith. They write about it RIA News".

“To avoid going crazy, you have to have a very strict plan. Every hour you need to occupy yourself with something. As soon as you allow yourself to relax and just think, your brain begins to trick you: what if, what if. This supported me,” Butina admitted.

During her imprisonment, she studied books on icon painting and art, and also read Russian classics.

The cell was very cold, released from it exclusively at night.

“I had time from one to three in the morning, which included the telephone. There were situations when I couldn’t get through to my parents for half an hour. The time is up - you close the door. Nobody cares whether you got through or not,” she complained.

Butina added that she worked in prison: she washed dishes in the dining room and taught prisoners mathematics. For teaching, she received 17 dollars a month, and working as a dishwasher turned out to be more profitable - almost 29 dollars.

On the day of her release, according to the girl, she was locked up for hours, she had to beg for food and water, and she was taken to the plane with armed guards.

“They promised to call me and call dad. Ultimately, the guys from Aeroflot helped me here. At least they wrote to dad. I was deceived again. They promised me one call to my parents: to tell me when my flight arrives,” Butina was indignant.

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The girl described every day of her imprisonment on paper - as a result, more than a thousand pages were accumulated. Now she plans to make some kind of “creative project” on this basis.

Maria has no concrete plans yet, but she does not exclude that she will protect the rights of convicts. In addition, she does not intend to refuse to advance the right to self-defense, that is, to possession of firearms.

The girl also added that she might take some legal steps to protect her reputation, which had been damaged due to a lawsuit in the USA, but preferred not to say yet what exactly she was going to do.

“I will not abandon this issue, because it is a matter of principle,” she concluded.

According to the press secretary of Russian President Vladimir Putin Dmitry Peskov, the head of the Kremlin does not plan to meet with Butina after her release.

What was Butina accused of?

Former assistant to Senator Alexander Torshin and founder of the Right to Weapons public movement, Maria Butina, was arrested on July 15, 2018.

The US Department of Justice charged her with conspiracy to work in the United States as a foreign agent without notifying the Attorney General.

Butina was accused of conspiracy in the interests of the Russian authorities. The essence of the claims was that she tried to create an informal channel of communication between American politicians and Moscow to advance Russia's interests.

According to the conclusions of the investigation, she had ambitious plans, but she only managed to get acquainted with several politicians in the United States and get on a couple of closed events.

In mid-December 2018, it turned out that Butina had gone for cooperation with the investigation and agreed with the prosecution’s version, according to which she tried to establish a network of contacts in the US National Rifle Association (NRA).

The accusations were mainly based on Butina’s ties with the former Russian senator and deputy head of the Central Bank, Alexander Torshin, who, according to the investigation, directed her actions.

The United States imposed sanctions against Torshin, and an investigation was conducted into the money he allegedly transferred to the NRA in order to influence American politics.

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Butina came to the attention of the FBI as an assistant to Alexander Torshin, a suspect in Russian interference in the American electoral process, a former member of the Federation Council, and then deputy chairman of the Bank of Russia. Torshin is a life member of the US National Rifle Association (NRA). He helped Butina create the all-Russian public organization “Right to Arms.” Writes about this «Radio Svoboda».

Around 2013, Butina met in Moscow Paul Erickson, an American lobbyist and political strategist with extensive connections in conservative circles and the leadership of the NRA. In 2014, Torshin and Butina went together to Indianapolis for the next annual NRA convention. No later than March 2015, as follows from Butina’s confession, she and Erickson “conspired” with Torshin and another person. The subject of the conspiracy was Butina’s activities in the United States under the leadership of Torshin without the statutory prior notification to the head of the US Department of Justice.

In April of 2015, Torshin again took Butina with him to the United States. She participated in meetings with management of the US Department of the Treasury and the US Federal Reserve. Both attended the NRA congress in Nashville. There, Maria Butina met Donald Trump Jr. In December, with the assistance of Butina, the NRA delegation visited Russia. Members of the delegation have met with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.

In May of 2016, Torshin came to the NRA congress in Louisville. With the assistance of the same Erickson, he met with Donald Trump Jr. He did not succeed in meeting with Trump the father, which he really wanted. According to the American press, he wanted to become a mediator, able to arrange an invitation to Trump from Putin, but this idea was rejected by the candidate’s senior advisers.

In June of the same year, Maria Butina came to the United States on a student visa - she entered an American university. In violation of her legal status, she, on the instructions and with the support of Torshin, continued to establish connections with influential persons, as stated in the indictment, “in order to advance the agenda of the Russian Federation.”

She also organized the Russian presence at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2017, which was traditionally attended by the president. A few weeks earlier, she met with a Russian diplomat whom the FBI suspected of espionage and who was expelled from the United States along with 59 by other diplomats as a punishment for the poisoning of Sergei and Julia Skripal in Salisbury.

According to the FBI, in 2015, Butina sent an e-mail to American lobbyist Paul Erickson, whom she was supposed to meet and live with.

The letter contained a draft proposal called diplomacy. It proposed using the NRA to influence the foreign policy of the Republican Party and its traditionally negative attitude towards the Russian authorities.

Such activities are not prohibited in the United States for registered foreign lobbyists, but Butina has not registered as a foreign agent, so her activities violated US law.

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In April of 2019, Butina received 18 months of jail following a verdict from an American court - it was at that time that prosecutors insisted. Since the summer of 2018, Butin has been in prison in Alexandria (Virginia).

In March, Maria Butina asked the court to deport her from the United States on the day of the sentence.

In a letter to Judge Tanya Chatken, the Russian woman noted that she was waiving her rights to protection from deportation from the country. She wrote that she understood her status - she was being deported as a foreigner involved in criminal activity and “undermining national security.”

The US Immigration and Customs Service, for its part, stated that it was ready to enforce the court’s decision on Butina’s deportation as soon as she received it.

As ForumDaily wrote earlier:

• Мария Бутина was detained in the US in July 2018. The court found her guilty of conspiracy to work as a foreign agent, as well as to act as a foreign agent without proper registration from 2015 of the year.
• In December, Butina made a deal with the investigation and partially admitted guilt. The court sentenced her to 18 months jail. Given the time spent in custody, she still had nine months in prison. She was to be released on 5 on November 2019, after which she would be deported from the United States. But it was later announced that Butin released from prison ahead of schedule.
• In Russia, Maria Butina was the leader of the movement “The Right to Arms”, which advocated the extension of the rights to possession of short-barreled rifles. The movement collaborated with the US National Shooting Association (NRA). In the year 2015, Butina entered the American University in Washington for a master's program in international relations. According to the American investigation, using connections in the NRA, she tried to establish contacts with Donald Trump's entourage.
• Journalist James Bamford held several meetings with the Russian woman Maria Butina accused of espionage in the USA (before and after her detention), during which she shared with him information about her activities, as well as told her version of a spy scandal.
• Convicted in the USA for working as a foreign agent without a license, Russian Maria Butina spoke about the conditions of stay in American prisons. According to her, torture was not applied to her, but psychologically the girl was hard.
• Also Butina recorded a video message from a prison in the USA. The entry was posted on Instagram by the head of the “Anti-globalist movement of Russia,” Alexander Ionov.
• Founder of Overstock billion-dollar online retailer Patrick Byrne claims FBI encouraged him romantic relationship with Maria Butina - used it as part of a “soft coup” against Donald Trump.

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