(CBS) - The woman convicted of being a covert Russian agent returned to her homeland on Saturday, deported by the United States after serving a prison sentence. Maria Butina was released Friday from a low-security facility in Florida.
Butina is a gun rights activist who sought to infiltrate conservative U.S. political groups and promote Russia's agenda around the time that Donald Trump rose to power. She had been in custody since her arrest in July 2018.
Upon her arrival at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after arriving on an Aeroflot flight from Miami, Butina was carrying a bouquet of flowers and rested her head on the shoulder of her father, Valery, who had come from their Siberian hometown of Barnaul to meet her.
"I am very, very, very happy to be back home. I am very grateful to everyone who supported me - all the Russian citizens who helped and wrote me letters and donated money for my defense," she said.
"Russians never surrender," Butina told reporters. In a subsequent interview with RT, Butina said: "What happened to me definitely shows that America is losing its justice system."
The former American University graduate student pleaded guilty last December to conspiring to act as an unregistered agent for Russia. She admitted that she and a former Russian lawmaker worked to leverage contacts in the National Rifle Association to pursue back channels to American conservatives.
Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman, who also met Butina at the airport, said the 30-year-old is a victim of entrenched anti-Russian attitudes.
"This is what, unfortunately, the previous U.S. administration started - trying to destroy the bilateral relationship," Maria Zakharova said. Since the election of President Donald Trump, Russian officials have consistently blamed troubled relations on so-called "Russophobia" carried over from the administration of President Barack Obama.
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