WEB DESK
Russia has welcomed the release of Maria Butina from a US prison. “We are glad that finally, after a long period of procrastination, the US justice system has made the decision that we have been pushing for a long time,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in Norway.
The Russian national was pleaded guilty late last year to conspiring to act as a clandestine foreign agent, released Friday into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Earlier on Friday, Butina was released from prison and taken into the custody of the US immigration service. The US State Department informed that Butina is set to fly out from Miami to Moscow, where she will arrive on Saturday morning.
Butina’s case
Maria Butina was arrested in Washington DC on July 15, 2018, right before the Helsinki meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump. The US Department of Justice said that she was suspected of acting “as an agent of Russia inside the United States by developing relationships with US persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation.”