x
Breaking News
More () »

‘We used to joke that she was a spy’: Maria Butina's life as an AU student before accusations

To most students, Maria Butina was an opinionated, but friendly classmate. Now, she's become known as a suspected Russian agent to rival Anna Chapman. Her lawyers say she was a student. The prosecutors say it was a cover.
Credit: Getty Images

Editor's Note: The author of this article is an American University alumni.

WASHINGTON -- When American University graduate student Sarah Dolezal noticed a then-blonde woman studying in the graduate student center, she decided to approach her.

Dolezal, who wrote for the student newspaper The Eagle, was working on a story about the accessibility of graduate student resources.

The student agreed to the interview and Dolezal, like she had been taught, took out her phone and started a voice recording.

And, after a moment of shuffling --

“My name is Maria Butina,” a woman’s voice with a Russian accent says into the recording. “B-U-T-I-N-A, that’s my last name.”

It was May 31, 2017 and Maria Butina was a graduate student at American University, studying international affairs, just over a year before she would be accused of acting as an unregistered Russian agent.

RELATED: American University graduate charged with conspiracy to act as Russian agent

In a 25-minute long conversation, the two chat freely about the resources available to graduate students. Butina expresses her desire for more lockers available to graduate students. She says she appreciates posters advertising student resources that paper the bathroom stalls.

The conversation is warm, friendly and relaxed, led on by Butina’s answers, which are smooth and matter-of-fact.

But about 11 minutes into the innocuous interview, Butina begins to explain an issue she had with a professor at the university.

“If something were to happen to you on campus, would you feel comfortable using the resources here?” Dolezal asks.

“That’s an interesting question. I had a situation here on campus,” Butina responds in a collected voice.

She discusses going to the dean of American University’s School of International Services over an issue that caused her to become “emotionally destabilized."

“What was the issue?” Dolezal asks, first inquiring if it involves a male or female student.

“It involved a professor,” Butina replies. And then, “And some media stuff.”

“Media? What does that mean, media?” Dolezal asks.

“I don’t want to discuss the situation,” Butina replies quickly, but when gently pressed by Dolezal, she opens up.

“It was an ethical question of the professor, who actually went public about me, and disclosed some things to the media,” she tells Dolezal.

“It gave me a lot of hard days,” she adds. “It still actually gives me a lot of hard days.”

At first, Butina says, she wanted to go to the Russian Consulate, but settled on speaking with the university. They told her that professors can't disclose information about students to the media, she says.

Butina says she actually never wanted her professor, who she did not name, to get punished, but just wanted professors to know not to talk to the media about students. Especially not her.

“Some of us [students] are from, like, countries where they’re not Democratic, I would say, governments,” she says.“We can tell a lot in class and if it’s published and we go back home, it can cause troubles for us.”

She uses Saudi Arabia and China as examples.

“If their Motherland knows they don’t follow some rules...that’s a danger for their life,” she explains.

“It caused huge problems for me,” she says without elaborating, “but at least no one else made the same mistake."

‘We used to joke that she was a Russian spy’

The news broke on a Monday night and almost immediately students from a American University were abuzz on social media: One of their recently graduated classmates had been arrested and charged with acting as an unregistered Russian agent.

“Soooooooooo I had a class with her and we used to joke that she was a Russian spy,” wrote American University graduate student Sierra Hicks on Twitter.

It was Maria Butina, whose face was soon popping up across social media platforms as students and alumni shared articles about her.

One alumni while sharing an article about Butina invoked the school’s motto, “Once an Eagle, Always an Eagle!"

Another student joked that the area surrounding the university should be renamed “Little Moscow.”

Maria Butina received her MA in International Affairs from American and graduated in May 2018, just months before she would be arrested and charged.

In a video of the commencement ceremony, Butina is actually the first student to walk across the stage for her degree.

Prosecutors say American University was a cover. There, posing as a graduate student, Butina could chalk up her political interests to classwork as she quietly continued her work for a Russian official at the time.

That cover could go unnoticed at a university that boasts that 64 percent of its incoming freshmen believe it’s “important to influence the political structure.”

A screenshot of the admissions information American University's School of International Service lists.

American University’s School of International Service, which Butina was a student of, lists its top employers of students as the Department of State, Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, among others.

Butina’s lawyer has insisted that she is just that: A student at a university known for its international affairs program.

During her first court appearance, Butina pleaded not guilty to charges that include conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent as court documents wrote that she was a covert agent who, on one occasion, allegedly attempted to trade sex for a position in a special interest group.

“You’ve upstaged Anna Chapman,” an unnamed Russian agent allegedly told Butina, referring to another red-haired Russian agent who was arrested in deported back to Russia in 2010.

‘Don’t friend her if you want your security clearance’

“She was an interesting person, people would talk about her,” Sierra Hicks said of Butina.

Hicks, who is currently working at her combined BA/MA in International Affairs at American University, took a global security class with Butina in the spring of 2017.

The School of International Service, where Maria Butina took classes.(PHOTO CREDIT: Chelsea Cirruzzo)

The program she was a part of with Butina was roughly 45 people, she says, which made it easy for rumors to fly about Butina.

RELATED: 'It's mind-boggling': American U students react to classmate Maria Butina's arrest

Hicks said Butina was known to go off on tangents during their classes. “Everyone knew she was a gun’s right activists,” Hicks said, and that was one of the topics Butina would pursue openly in class.

“She was loud,” Hicks said.

In one instance, Hicks said the class got onto the topic of the Russian occupation of Crimea. Hicks said Butina was adamant that Crimea belonged to Russia and Russian action was justified. For Hicks, it made sense.

“She’d talk about her family a lot in Siberia...I thought it was because she was an international student. She would settle in,” Hicks said.

However, Hicks said some members of her class remained suspicious of Butina. One student, who asked to remain anonymous, insisted he had a feeling that Butina was a covert agent since the 2016 election.

When asked why he felt like that, he said: “Because it’s a young Russian woman who is really into guns…this is like Black Widow from the Avengers…this is like a Bond Girl.”

The anonymous classmate concedes that other students didn’t feel so strongly at first, but both he and Hicks brought up a similar sentiment they’d had heard about Butina: Be careful.

Hicks said that there were a few students who were reluctant to friend her on Facebook, despite being in a Facebook group with them.

“‘Don’t friend her or you won’t get your security clearance,’” she said she heard one or two other students say, referring to the clearance someone who wants to work for the government needs to have. Hicks said some people took that advice.

The anonymous classmate echoed those words. He said that after the 2016 election he largely avoided Butina.

And then, there was one moment, Hicks said, that stuck out to her.

During a class conversation about experiences with the TSA, Hicks said Butina spoke up about being asked by the TSA if she was a Russian agent. Hicks said Butina told them she said she wasn't and was in the U.S. for school.

"I keep coming back to that moment, because obviously she was kind of working for the Russian government, allegedly was," said Hicks.

Still, Hicks said Butina came across as genuinely friendly. One day in class, Butina gave Hicks her scarf upon noticing that she was cold.

Even in her conversation with Dolezal, she sounds pleasant. During their conversation, Butina compliments Dolezal’s name and mentions other names she thinks are nice, “like Elizabeth.”

“She just had a big personality,” Hicks said.

That was apparent even outside of Butina’s MA cohort. Grace V., a recently graduated undergraduate student, took a finance class with Butina.

According to Grace, Butina was very active in class and spoke nearly anytime a question was asked. “It got to the point that I would notice a shift in mood in my class (like a giant eye roll from everyone) whenever she would speak because she literally talked all the time,” Grace wrote in an email.

Another classmate called her a "know-it-all."

Despite Butina’s apparent interest in her studies in class, court papers allege that she had someone else (identified as U.S. Person 1 in the documents) help her with her academic work through editing papers and answering exam questions.

RELATED: Who is the South Dakota man linked to Russian agent Maria Butina?

Though in her 2017 conversation with Dolezal, Butina says she often goes to professors' "open door hours" because she has trouble understanding her assignments due to her language barrier.

Butina was known to be open about the cultural differences between Russia and the U.S. and would even ask classmates for suggestions on American pop culture to enjoy, seeking movie and TV recommendations.

In a 2017 article posted to the university's website, Butina is listed among a group of international students invited to meet with other students to discuss the differences between America and post-Soviet Russia.

Credit: Chelsea Cirruzzo
American University

"It helped us to focus on similarities that unite us more than on the differences that divide us," Butina is quoted as saying in the article.

Outside of the classroom, both Hicks and the anonymous student describe Butina in ways that suggest a regular student: she attended outings within the cohort, and would invite her classmates out with her to Russia House, a restaurant in DuPont Circle.

“She was trying to connect with everyone,” her anonymous classmate said.

'I didn't want to cross that boundary'

A February 2017 Daily Beast article on Butina said that Russia House was a familiar haunt of hers.

The article also mentions a woman named Svetlana Savranskaya, who is identified as Butina’s former American University professor. Savranskaya told The Daily Beast that Butina frequently bragged in her class about being part of Russian communications with the Trump administration.

Just a few months after the article, Dolezal would interview Butina on experiencing an issue with an unnamed professor and the media.

However, Dolezal says no part of her interview with Butina was ever published.

Roughly two weeks after their first interaction, Dolezal said she ran into Butina again on campus. This time, she was with another girl.

There, Butina told Dolezal she no longer wanted to be part of the article. “I obliged because she was an international student and I didn’t want to cross that boundary,” Dolezal said.

Their next interaction was in September of that year when Dolezal emailed Butina to say that her article -- without Butina -- had been published.

The article had taken a different turn (Dolezal said she ended up writing about accessibility of sexual assault resources), but she was still working on “new development for AU in the DC area” and wanted to know if Butina would be a part of it.

She also asked how difficult it was for international students to get internships in D.C. and if Butina planned on remaining in the U.S. after graduation.

In her response back two days later, Butina simply declined the interview, telling Dolezal that she was currently looking for a job and was exhausted.

“Please do not consider my article as rude, but I am really exhausted from studying,” she wrote.

That was the end of their communications and Dolezal thought little of Maria until she saw her name in the news on Monday.

‘Another piece to the puzzle’

For American University students, access to high-profile events and internships is second nature. The school sits in Northwest, D.C., just down the road from several embassies and a Metro ride away from downtown. It isn't uncommon for students to attend embassy galas, including at the Russian embassy, or to see prestigious speakers right on campus.

In 2015, President Obama delivered his Iran deal address in the atrium of the School of International Service.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the Iran nuclear agreement August 5, 2015 at American University in Washington, DC. Obama is pushing for congress to appove the nuclear deal reached with Iran. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Most, if not all, students, regardless of discipline, are encouraged to seek out internships in Washington, D.C.

In fact, the program Butina was a part of requires a “substantial” internship in order to graduate. It's a requirement Butina may have fulfilled by interning for the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association in 2017, according to her LinkedIn profile.

In other words, the program encouraged involvement in international affairs organizations outside of the classroom.

And that's why student reaction to finding out one of their own has been charged with acting as a Russian operative has largely been amused.

Students in a Facebook group devoted to memes took it as an opportunity to poke fun at the situation. Someone posted a fake job listing at the Russian Embassy within a Facebook group devoted to helping students find internships. “Benefits include mingling with senators and travel to Moscow.”

Another student created a false poster announcing Butina as the university’s “Wonk of the Year,” an annual honor bestowed by the university that recognizes significant achievement by a well-known figure. Past “Wonks” have included Malala Yousafzai and Anderson Cooper.

And when the Russian Foreign Ministry appeared to launch a #FreeMariaButina Facebook campaign, some American University students, perhaps unintentionally, countered with their own joking version. Profile pictures cropped up with #FreeMariaButina and under it, the American University logo.

For Hicks, she said she immediately began reaching out to other classmates to reflect on the news. She says another student in their cohort posted an article about Butina into their Facebook group, a group Butina is in. The post was later deleted.

The classmate who declined to be named described it as an “‘I told you so’ moment,” after his parents sent him an article.

For Dolezal, she says, looking back on all of her interactions with Butina, she says she wasn’t totally shocked.

She had initially approached Butina for her article after being intrigued that she was an international student and felt she would be a good addition to her story.

Now, Dolezal described the news as “another piece of the puzzle of the broader issue that’s going on the U.S. investigation” into Russia.

If Butina was hoping she’d stay out of the media spotlight following that Dean’s office visit in 2017, it is now impossible. A Wikipedia page details her life and arrest and photos of her, red-haired and gun-toting, are easy to find.

A judge ruled during her first court appearance that Butina would be held without bond until her next trial after prosecutors said she was a flight risk.

In the meantime, students, colleagues and the rest of Washington are left to wait and watch as Butina's trial hopes to uncover who she really was: graduate student with an interest in guns or an unregistered Russian agent.

But, if anything is clear about Maria, according to her classmates such as Hicks, it's one thing: She had an affection for her Motherland, for Russia.

“She had a photo of Putin in her clear phone case,” Hicks said. “So, it was clear she loved him.”

Editor's Note: The author of this article is an alumni of American University.

Before You Leave, Check This Out