Vladimir Putin says US decision to jail Russian agent Butina is ‘an outrage’

Vladimir Putin sharply criticised a US decision to jail Russian citizen Maria Butina, who was sentenced to 18 months last Friday on charges of working on behalf of a foreign government without appropriate registration.

Describing it as “an outrage”, the Russian president said her treatment by US authorities was a travesty.

Butina was found guilty of attempting to infiltrate the US National Rifle Association and sway activists to shift American policies in favour of Russia.

“It’s not clear what she was convicted of or what crime she committed. I think it’s a prime example of ‘saving face’. They arrested her and put the girl in jail,” Mr Putin said in Beijing.

“But there was nothing on her, so in order not to look totally stupid they gave her, fixed her up, with an 18-month sentence to show that she was guilty of something,” he said.

Butina, 30, pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as a foreign agent. She told the court she had destroyed her life.

“I humbly request forgiveness. I’m not this evil person depicted in the media,” she told the court in Washington before her sentence was announced.

The NRA is regarded as close to the Republican party and US President Donald Trump, who has long been accused of having links to Russia.

Prosecutors said that although she worked openly and was not tied to any Russian intelligence agency, she was sending back reports to a high-level Russian government official and posed a threat to the US.

Butina is said to have sent regular updates to her handler Alexander Torshin, who at the time was a senior Kremlin politician and central bank deputy governor who had accompanied her to NRA conventions.

Russia’s foreign ministry said “the accusations brought against her, intended to influence the internal political process in the United States, are totally invented and fabricated”.

“Our compatriot was condemned just because she is a Russian citizen.”

Maria Butina was found guilty of trying to infiltrate the US National Rifle Association