Russian agent sentenced to 18 months

Bloomberg

Maria Butina, the self-styled Russian gun-rights activist who befriended senior officials from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Republican party in the run-up to the 2016 election, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for failing to register in the US as an agent of a foreign government.
Butina told US District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington that she was “deeply sorry” and felt “ashamed and embarrassed” by the international scandal she caused.
“Just an apology will never be enough for my mistakes, dear judge, because instead of building peace I created discord,” she said.
Described by some as a Russian “spy,” Butina, 30, was actually a master networker — a woman who used her purported interest in gun rights to facilitate meetings with NRA officials and prominent figures in the Republican party. A former American University student, she was arrested in July and has been held in prison since. Butina pleaded guilty in December and faced a maximum of five years.
She’ll get credit for the nine months she’s already spent in jail, and will be deported to Russia after completing her sentence.
Chutkan described Butina as “intelligent, personable, kind and hard-working” and credited her for cooperating with the US government and accepting responsibility for her conduct. But the judge said her offense jeopardised US national security.
“This was no simple misunderstanding by an overeager foreign student,” Chutkan said.
The Russian Embassy in the US called for Butina’s immediate release in a statement on Twitter. “Maria Butina is a political prisoner, a victim of repressive #US justice norms and a provocation masterminded by the US special services,” the embassy said.
In a court filing, the former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division described Butina’s role as part of a “spot and assess” operation that could identify suitable targets for eventual recruitment.