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A federal indictment was filed against alleged Russian spy Marina Butina this past week. She is accused of conspiring to “advance the interests of the Russian Federation.” Butina has ties to a high-level Russian official connected to Putin.

Desperate Trump-haters, searching for something – anything! – to show that the Trump administration is in bed with Vladimir Putin seized on the news a week ago that a young Russian named Maria Butina had been indicted for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), or, in the words of the DOJ, for "conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation within the United States without prior notification to the Attorney General." Here at last was a face – and a red-headed female one, to boot – to attach to the charges of treason being thrown around by the likes...

A 29-year-old Russian woman accused of working as a covert spy while in the U.S. on a student visa remains behind bars.photoButina is a suspected covert Russian spy. She is a Russian national who was in the U.S. on a student visa, enrolled at American University in Washington, D.C. She received her graduate degree from the university in May.She's known for her pro-gun activism and founded a Russian gun rights group in Moscow.The 29-year-old grew up in a modest apartment building in the Siberian city of Barnaul, closer to the Mongolian and Kazakh borders than Moscow.She developed an interest in...

The substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez lab, the Russian foreign minister said. The toxin was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states. Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with an incapacitating toxin known as 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, citing the results of the examination conducted by a Swiss chemical lab that worked with the samples that London handed over to the Organisation for the Prohibition of the Chemical...

Moscow [Russia], Apr. 15 (ANI): Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed on Saturday that the toxin used to poison former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, was BZ toxin, as confirmed by a Swiss laboratory. "Based on the results of the examination, traces of the toxic chemical BZ and its precursors, related to chemical weapons of the second category in accordance with the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, were found in the samples. BZ is a nerve agent temporarily disabling a person. The effect is achieved within 30-50 minutes and lasts up to four days," said...

The international chemical weapons watchdog has backed Britain’s findings on the identity of the chemical used in the Salisbury nerve agent attack. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said an analysis of samples taken from the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia, and Det Sgt Nick Bailey confirmed the assessment of the UK, which has said that the three were affected by novichok, a military grade nerve agent developed by Russia. The executive summary released by the OPCW does not mention novichok by name, but states: “The results of the analysis by the OPCW designated laboratories...

SALISBURY, England (Reuters) - Yulia Skripal has left hospital more than five weeks after she and her father, a former Russian spy, were poisoned with a nerve agent in an attack that has sparked one of the biggest crises in the West’s relations with the Kremlin since the Cold War. -snip- The Skripals were in a critical condition for weeks and doctors at one point feared, even if they survived, they might have suffered brain damage. But the Skripals’ health since then has begun to improve rapidly. Yulia, 33, has been discharged from Salisbury District Hospital, Christine Blanshard, medical director...

The revelation of Porton Down’s CEO shows that someone has been lying about the Skripal case, and that someone is Boris Johnson. The Chief of the Defense Science and Tech lab at Porton Down, the lab examining the chemical agent that the Skripals were poisoned with, came out with the news, in an interview with SkyNews, that they have no idea where the poison originated: “We were able to identify it as Novichok, to identify that it was military-grade nerve agent.” “We have not identified the precise source, but we have provided the scientific info to government who have then...

A boy looks through a bus window alleged to be carrying Russian diplomats and their family members who were ordered to leave the US, as they depart from Vnukovo 2 government airport, outside Moscow, Russia, Sunday, April 1, 2018. The United States and more than a dozen European nations kicked out Russian diplomats on Monday and the Trump administration ordered Russia's consulate in Seattle to close, as the West sought joint punishment for Moscow's alleged role in poisoning an ex-spy in Britain. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry says Britain's failure to track down the source...

Britain has yet to identify the assassin who tried to murder the double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England. But Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson knows who ordered the hit. "We think it overwhelmingly likely that it was (Russian President Vladimir Putin's) decision to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the U.K." "Unforgivable," says Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov of the charge, which also defies "common sense." On Sunday, Putin echoed Peskov: "It is just sheer nonsense, complete rubbish, to think that anyone in Russia could do anything like that in the run-up...

Russia is to expel 23 British diplomats amid tensions over the nerve agent attack on a former spy and his daughter in the UK. The Russian foreign ministry said staff from the UK's Moscow embassy would be expelled within a week. It also said it would close the British Council in Russia, which promotes cultural ties between the nations, and the British Consulate in St. Petersburg. The move comes in response to Britain's decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats.........

... Now police say his daughter might have brought it from Russia in her suitcase - but it is just the latest of a series of bizarre theories Thirteen days after Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were attacked with a nerve agent in Salisbury, police appear to be no nearer any answers as to how the pair were poisoned. Theories banded around in the past fortnight include food poisoning, a bouquet of flowers laced with the deadly substance Novichok and the lethal toxin being smeared on the former agent's car door handle. Now, it is understood investigators have turned...

UK police have launched a murder investigation after the death of Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov in south-west London. Mr Glushkov was found dead at his home in New Malden on 12 March. A post-mortem examination revealed Mr Glushkov, who was 68, died from "compression to the neck". There is, at this stage, no evidence linking the death to the attempted murder of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury, police say.

The London nerve agent attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter has been specifically ascribed to Russia by the United Kingdom prime minister, fully supported by the White House and American officials including at the United Nations. That attack itself – the first attack using weapons of mass destruction on NATO soil – calls for a significant response. But such a response is even more imperative when placed in the context of Russia’s ongoing hybrid warfare against the West and against vulnerable neighbors like Ukraine.In recent years, Russia and its surrogates have engaged in other instances of...

The murder of Litvinenko, the author of "The FSB Blows Up Russia" says, was like the bombings of the apartment houses in 1999: everything pointed in one direction, but it was circumstantial rather than definitive; and thus his death became as it were “part of the psychological war of Russia and the West and its own compatriots. But the special operation carried out against Skripal “has different goals.” It is not excluded, that Moscow wanted to test the personality of the British prime minister who had to be forced to pursue the Litvinenko case but now is prepared to be...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is "overwhelmingly likely" to have ordered the nerve agent attack on an ex-spy and his daughter, Boris Johnson has said. The foreign secretary said "our quarrel is with Putin's Kremlin, and with his decision" over the Salisbury incident. Russia denies involvement and said the accusations against Mr Putin were "shocking and unforgivable". Meanwhile, the head of Nato told the BBC that Russia has underestimated the "resolve and unity" of the UK's allies. Speaking during a visit to a west London military museum with the Polish foreign minister, Mr Johnson said the UK's "quarrel is with Putin's...

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley tells a Security Council meeting that "the U.S. believes Russia is responsible for the attack on two people in the United Kingdom using a military grade nerve agent." She also urges Russia to account for its actions. Video at link above

British police have identified more than 200 witnesses and are looking at more than 240 pieces of evidence in their investigation into a nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy and his daughter, UK interior minister Amber Rudd said on Saturday. Ms Rudd told reporters after chairing a meeting of the government’s Cobra security committee that more than 250 counter-terrorism police were involved in the investigation, which was proceeding with “speed and professionalism”. Former double agent Sergei Skripal (66) and his daughter Yulia (33) have been in hospital in a critical condition since Sunday, when they were found unconscious on...

The BBC has learned that US officials "verified" a key claim in a report about Kremlin involvement in Donald Trump's election - that a Russian diplomat in Washington was in fact a spy. So far, no single piece of evidence has been made public proving that the Trump campaign joined with Russia to steal the US presidency - nothing. But the FBI Director, James Comey, told a hushed committee room in Congress last week that this is precisely what his agents are investigating. Stop to let that thought reverberate for a moment. "Investigation is not proof," said the president's spokesman....

The SSU has detained a Russian citizen who performed intelligence agencies’ tasks to destabilize the situation in the southern regions of Ukraine, informs the SSU’s press service. Maiya Koleda, born in 1991, arrived in Kherson on April 4 of this year. According to her, this is her ninth trip to Ukraine. "During April 5-6, she had several meetings with the leaders and activists of pro-Russian movements in Kherson, and visited some regional centers to monitor the situation at the local level," the statement from the SSU reads. On April 7, she took part in battles at Mykolayiv Oblast State Administration...