Maria Butina, who was imprisoned in the United States in April after admitting that she worked as a Russian secret agent, arrived in Moscow on Saturday, received by her father and the Russian journalists who handed her flowers.
The Aeroflot flight that departed from Miami arrived at the Sheremetyevo airport in the Russian capital shortly before 11:30 a.m., according to information on airport arrivals.
Butina, a right to bear arms activist that sought to infiltrate American conservative political groups when Donald Trump rose to power, left a low-security detention center in Florida on Friday. Butina was in prison since his arrest in July 2018.
“The Russians never give up,” an emotional Butina told reporters at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, flanked by her father and the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Grabbing a bouquet of white roses, the 30-year-old graduate student thanked her supporters and added that she was happy to return home.
Butina pleaded guilty in December last year to a conspiracy charge to act as a Russian secret agent by infiltrating a weapons rights group and influencing conservative and Republican activists in the United States.
Her case further strained relations between the United States and Russia, which led Moscow to accuse Washington of forcing Butina to confess what they described as ridiculous charges.
Butina, released from a Florida prison on Friday after serving most of her 18-month sentence, did not comment about her case to reporters at the airport.
Butina had been scheduled to be released from the low-security prison in Tallahassee in early November, but a change in federal law increased her credit-based release date for good behavior, according to her US lawyer, Robert Driscoll.
The return home of the Russian spy has generated speculation that Paul Whelan, a former US Marine held in Russia since December last year on charges of espionage, could also be sent home.
