US: Russian sentenced to 18 months for conspiracy

WASHINGTON

Admitted Russian agent Maria Butina was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison for attempting to infiltrate conservative circles to advance Russian interests.

Butina, a 30-year-old Russian national, was arrested by the FBI in July and has been held in federal custody. She pleaded in December to being a secret agent working to advance the Kremlin's interests and faced up to five years behind bars.

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, however, handed down a comparatively light sentence.

"This was no simple misunderstanding by an overeager foreign student," Chutkan said, according to multiple reports.

Butina, a gun rights advocate and American University graduate student, reportedly expressed remorse for her crime and sought leniency during a sentencing hearing.

She will be credited for the time she spent in jail following her arrest, leaving roughly nine months on her term, and will be deported to Russia after serving her sentence is completed.

Butina admitted she worked to gain information on the National Rifle Association and other conservative groups for Alexander Torshin, a Russian official and former lawmaker, from early 2015 through February 2017.

She admitted to seeking to establish unofficial lines of communication between Torshin and the conservative circles and use them to Russia's benefit.

"Under his direction, she provided key information about Americans who were in a position to influence United States politics and took steps to establish an unofficial line of communication between Russia and these Americans," the Justice Department said in a statement announcing Butina's sentencing.

Her attorneys sought to make the case Butina was simply seeking to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.