The plane with Maria Butina was greeted in Moscow as a presidential airliner. Although not all heads of state are honored with such a reception. Journalists occupied the Sheremetyevo airport on Friday, when it became known that the prisoner, who spent 18 months in an American prison, was released and is preparing to return to her homeland. Having stepped out into the arrivals hall, the girl found herself at gunpoint of two (or even more) hundreds of cameras and cameras. This is a very significant context for the ending of a dramatic story, since it demonstrates the degree of public attention to it. Journalists in this case are, as usual, a simple tuning fork.

Why did the strange and not very understandable to the layman arrest of a compatriot who had long lived and settled down overseas and, apparently, had no plans to change her place of residence, become a socially significant event, which was considered necessary to describe and analyze in detail the leading domestic media? There are several reasons.

On the one hand, the Russian state (in particular, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) immediately began to accompany this case, commenting on its various stages. The lack of evidence of the accusation, the conditions of prison, which can be qualified without torture as torture, all this regularly became the subject of a detailed analysis of Russian parliamentarians and the press speaker of the Foreign Ministry.

That is, Russia, as a state, has taken under the strictest control the fate of an individual citizen, thus setting the political bar on the division “We Don’t Drop Our Own”. But if earlier it was a question of peoples or ethnic groups, now the solution has shifted to the level of unity, individual, citizen.

Can we talk about political victory? So far, experience in this area seems to be only being developed, and Maria Butina still served the appointed time, although, based on the practice of American justice, it was not very large.

I suppose thanks to a rather quick official reaction to her arrest and prosecution.

The matter itself does not make sense. The evidence of her conspiracy is unclear with whom in order to conduct activities as an unregistered foreign agent - such was the final charge - the court was never provided. In fact, the prosecution left due to self-incrimination, to which Butina was forced, not allowing a doctor to come to her, depriving her of walks and preventing her from sleeping.

This, incidentally, is a very standard method of pressure on prisoners in America. The girl’s Russian citizenship saved her from drowning torture, which is still being applied to those who are considered Islamic terrorists.

The harsh and uncompromising stance taken by all branches of the Russian government in this story undoubtedly facilitated the fate of a young woman who became a hostage to the political struggle in America. She was accused and convicted only to prove the interference of the “Russians” in the American election.

Another reason for the increased interest in the situation is the reluctance of Russia and its citizens to put up with the principle of "extraterritoriality", which America, which is losing its political influence, is still trying to use inertia on most of the planet. A significant number of countries are ready to put up with this, but we do not - no longer. Butina’s case is that Russian citizens cannot be crushed into chips by the American law enforcement machine when it suddenly occurs to her to gobble up some Russian.

I don’t know how to evaluate this victory. She is one of the first, and therefore large and small at the same time. But this is not the only problem. The chairman of the State Duma committee, Leonid Slutsky, is right, who says that we are only at the beginning of a long journey: “Russian citizens still remain in American prisons. In particular, Konstantin Yaroshenko, Viktor Bout, Roman Seleznev are serving long periods of time. All of them became victims of the so-called extraterritorial American law and were convicted with particular bias. We need not to give up and continue to fight for each of our compatriots who are in trouble away from their homeland. "

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.