Does Maria Butina Remind You of Someone?

That "Russian Spy"is anything but, though Reuters is claiming in an exclusive report that she got into see a couple of Treasury Department officials.  The visits were arranged by the Washington D.C. think tank, Center for the National Interest, a group favoring better relations between Russia and the US.  This will surely be played into something sinister by the press, but it is hard to claim much benefit from meeting with two Treasury officials.

It reminds of another Russian influence peddler, Anna Chapman.  The similarities are interesting, a conclusion the New York Post published today.  The Russians thought enough about the 10 people around Chapman that they traded four people being held in Russia for all 10 of them.  Chapman was doing the same kind of influence peddling that Butina was doing, and she may have been more successful at it.  Because she and her gang weren't interested in classified information, nobody really took them seriously.  Now the US knows there can be some benefit in influencing thought leaders.  We might point out here that the Russians were doing a lot of the things prior to the 2016 election to influence behavior of policy makers in the US.  They are getting better at it in the 8 years since Chapman was caught, but if  you look at what each of these groups were doing, there is not much difference in approach.