Accused Russian spy Mariia Butina infiltrated US conservative political circles

A young Russian woman charged with acting as a foreign agent in the United States infiltrated the inner circle of Washington conservative politics, it has been claimed.

Mariia Butina, 29, was arrested in Washington on Monday just hours after President Donald Trump met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

The top federal prosecutor in Washington DC, Jessie Liu, has alleged Butina has been working as an unregistered agent of the Kremlin since 2015, a charge that can carry a 10-year prison sentence.

"(Butina) took steps to develop relationships with American politicians in order to establish private, or as she called them, 'back channel' lines of communication," an FBI affidavit, seen by nine.com.au, said.

"These lines could be used by the Russian Federation to penetrate the US national decision-making apparatus to advance the agenda of the Russian Federation."

But Butina appears to have friends in high places.

In 2014 she met Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal, and was photographed with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker the following year.

At the time the governor was considered a frontrunner to be the Republican presidential nominee.

That same year she attended an event named FreedomFest, where she asked then-candidate Trump about improving US relations with Russia.

"I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin. Okay?" he replied.

"I don't think you need the sanctions. I think that we would get along very, very well."

She also hosted vocal Trump advocate and Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke at an event in Moscow.

The Siberian-born woman managed to build connections with conservatives in Washington thanks to her advocacy of guns.

As the founder of Russian gun rights group The Right to Bear Arms, Butina became a lifetime member of the NRA.

Trump's current national security advisor John Bolton filmed a video for Butina's group in 2013.

An image also circulated on Twitter last night purporting to show Butina in the Oval Office with Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. But the woman in that photograph turned out to be a Trump administration staffer who shares an uncanny resemblance to Butina.

Butina was subject to a profile piece in Russia's GQ in 2014, posing with handguns and designer clothes.

Butina's arrest came a day after special counsel Robert Mueller charged 12 Russian intelligence officials with a hacking campaign to sway the US election towards Trump.

But her arrest is not related to the collusion investigation.