Russia seeks spy suspect’s release, rips charges

Russia’s foreign minister told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday that charges against a woman accused of infiltrating U.S. political organizations as a covert Russian agent were “fabricated” and she should be released.

The appeal by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was made in a phone call, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry. The Department of Justice has charged the woman, Maria Butina, with acting as an unregistered agent of Russia while attending conventions of the National Rifle Association and gaining access to conservative circles in an effort to influence powerful Republicans.

Moscow has mounted a vigorous effort on behalf of Butina. On Thursday, the Foreign Ministry began a social media campaign on its Twitter and Facebook accounts, declaring that it was mobilizing a digital “flash mob” to demand her release.

“As we know, Maria Butina has been in the United States for a long time as a student at a university in Washington, and she has not been hiding from anybody,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said. “It appears that instead of dealing with its core responsibilities in fighting crime, the FBI is carrying out a blatant political order. As we understand it, the order came from those who continue to stir up Russophobic hysteria, for which purpose they regularly plant more fictional sensations about Russia’s alleged interference in the internal affairs of the United States.”

The State Department had no immediate comment on Saturday’s exchange, though it’s unlikely that the United States would suddenly release Butina. In a detailed indictment, the Justice Department has accused her of engaging in a series of deceptions over a number of years.

The phone conversation Saturday also touched on what the Russian Foreign Ministry described as efforts to improve conditions in Syria.

The call came after a week in which Moscow seemed to move forward with what U.S. officials said were “agreements” reached at Monday’s summit between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump. With Trump slow to offer an account of his private discussion with Putin, details have instead flowed from Moscow on issues involving the security of Israel and the wars in Syria and Ukraine.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, for example, said Friday that it had sent to the United States a proposal to expand cooperation in Syria beyond military “de-conflicting” — ensuring Russian and U.S. forces do not inadvertently target one another — to include the repatriation of refugees and the financing of reconstruction.

“Progress in this area was enabled by an agreement, reached by the presidents of Russia and the United States, during the meeting in Helsinki,” Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev told journalists in a briefing at the Russian general staff headquarters.

The Russian proposal calls for creating a Russian-American group to work on the return of Syrian refugees from Jordan and Lebanon. Mizintsev said the “American side is now working on the Russian proposal” though there was no immediate response to the idea from Washington.

The U.S. general overseeing operations in Syria, Gen. Joseph Votel, said Thursday that he had received no new directions from Washington. And the United States and its European allies have long insisted they will not pay for postwar reconstruction in areas controlled by the Syrian president, Bashar Assad.

Russian officials also described a proposal by Putin to hold a referendum on the future of Donbas in eastern Ukraine, a coal-mining and steel-smelting region that has been gripped by four years of war between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government.

The Ukrainians say any such vote would be manipulated and meaningless as long as Russian troops and Russian-backed paramilitaries control the territory. An election in the war zone would also have to address a thorny issue of voting rights for refugees and internally displaced people.

Putin described the referendum proposal Thursday to a gathering of Russian diplomats that was closed to the media, but participants soon confirmed his comments to Bloomberg, which first reported the offer.

Only on Friday did a spokesman for the National Security Council, Garrett Marquis, finally dismiss the idea. “The administration is not considering supporting a referendum in eastern Ukraine,” Marquis said.