(Bloomberg) -- Maria Butina, a Russian who was freed after serving a U.S. prison sentence for failing to register as an agent of a foreign government, arrived in Moscow and thanked diplomats and groups who supported her.
“Russians don't give up,” she said in a brief statement at the airport, accompanied by her father and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
A phalanx of TV cameras awaited her, but she didn't take questions after making the brief statement. President Vladimir Putin has no plans to meet her, the Kremlin said on Friday.
Butina, a self-styled gun-rights activist who befriended senior officials from the National Rifle Association and the Republican party in the run-up to the 2016 election, was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Russia described Butina as a political prisoner and victim of provocation by U.S. special services.
--With assistance from Anatoly Medetsky.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gregory L. White in Moscow at gwhite64@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Thomasson at lthomasson@bloomberg.net, Sara Marley, Jon Menon
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