(Newswire.net— April 27, 2019) — A federal judge in Washington sentenced Maria Butina, a Russian woman to 18 months in prison for espionage after she had admitted she had tried to infiltrate the Republican circles and promote Russian interests before and after the presidential elections in 2016.
For this thirty-year-old woman, who has been in jail since last July, the prosecutor himself has estimated that she is not a spy in the traditional sense, but explained that her actions could jeopardize the national security of the United States.
Butina admitted in December that she used her contacts in political circles and republican organizations to influence US-Russian relations in favor of Russia. Her intention to lobby for Russia’s interest is recognized as espionage by the Federal court.
Sources close to the investigation explained that she had primarily given statements about her boyfriend, conservative U.S. political activist Paul Erikson, who is not indicted in this case, but he is charged for wire fraud and money laundering in South Dakota.
Butina, former graduate student at American University in Washington, pleaded guilty to felony charges of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent in the US, a requirement she said she was unaware of.
“My parents discovered my arrest on the morning news they watch in their rural house in a Siberian village,” Butina told the court. “I love them dearly, but I harmed them morally and financially. They are suffering from all of that. I destroyed my own life as well. I came to the United States not under any orders, but with hope, and now nothing remains but penitence.”
Butina will be deported to Russia after she serves the rest of her sentence as she already spent nine months in prison during the trial. She has been held without bond since her arrest on July 15 2018. Her lawyer Robert Driscoll, told reporters on Friday that Butina would not be sentenced if she wasn’t from Russia, implicating that this is a case of political arrest.
The Russian Foreign Ministry called the sentence on Maria Butina a “politically motivated” decision “in the spirit of McCarthyism,” adding that her only crime was being a Russian citizen in the US, Russia Today reports. He said that Butina’s confession “changes nothing” for being coerced through “harsh imprisonment conditions and threats of a lengthy sentence.”
In two interviews to CNN, Butina said that she has no plans to become a media darling or television star when she returns home.
“I’m not a circus bear,” Butina told CNN.