Russian agent Butina released from U.S. prison, deported

Convicted Russian agent Maria Butina was released from a Florida prison on Friday after serving most of her 18-month sentence for conspiring to influence U.S. conservative activists and infiltrate a powerful gun rights group, and taken into custody by immigration officials to be deported to her native country.

Butina, 31, had been scheduled for release from the low-security prison in Tallahassee in early November, but a change in federal law moved up her release date based on credit for good behavior, her attorney Robert Driscoll said.

A prison official confirmed she was released on Friday morning and taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities.

She left Miami International Airport on a direct flight to Moscow at about 6 p.m. (2200 GMT), ICE said in a statement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously expressed “outrage” over Butina’s prison sentence and said she did not carry out any orders from Russian security services.

Butina, a former graduate student at American University in Washington who publicly advocated for gun rights, pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

The Siberia native admitted to conspiring with a Russian official and two Americans to infiltrate the National Rifle Association, a group closely aligned with U.S. conservatives and Republican politicians including President Donald Trump, and create unofficial lines of communication to try to shape Washington’s policy toward Moscow.

Her 18-month sentence included nine months she spent incarcerated after her July 2018 arrest.

Butina’s case was separate from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, which detailed numerous contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Her activities occurred during the same period as the contacts investigated by Mueller.