KIRKENES /Norway/, October 25. /TASS/. Russia welcomes the release of Maria Butina from a US prison, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters on Friday.

"We are glad that finally, after a long period of procrastination, the US justice system has made the decision that we have been pushing for a long time," he said.

Earlier on Friday, Butina was released from prison and taken into custody of the US immigration service. The US State Department informed that Butina is set to fly out from Miami to Moscow, where she will arrive on Saturday morning.

Butina’s case

Maria Butina was arrested in Washington DC on July 15, 2018, right before the Helsinki meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump. The US Department of Justice said that she was suspected of acting "as an agent of Russia inside the United States by developing relationships with US persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation."

Butina had arrived in the United States for a course of studies. In the spring of 2018, she obtained a master’s degree at American University, where she studied international relations.

On December 13, 2018, Butina pled guilty to conspiracy to violating the US foreign agents law, and acquiesced to a plea deal. On April 26, a court in Washington sustained the prosecution’s request for sentencing Butina to 18 months behind bars. Her sentence ended on October 25.