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“Butina provided the Russian Federation with information that skilled intelligence officers can exploit for years and that may cause significant damage to the United States,” Mr. Anderson wrote. He said efforts like hers helped Russians identify midlevel targets who lacked direct access to classified or sensitive information but had government or political connections that might later prove valuable.

Ms. Butina’s lawyers said she cooperated with prosecutors for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and with Senate investigators scrutinizing Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election, including providing copies of her communications with Mr. Torshin.

In return for her cooperation, prosecutors said, they shaved six months off their recommended sentence. She will be given credit for the nine months she has already served — much of it in solitary confinement — and deported once her prison term ends.

Ms. Butina, clad in a green inmate’s jumpsuit, told the judge that she never intended to harm the American political process, but was a victim of her own ignorance of the law. “The United States has always been kind to me,” she said.

Her defense team had argued for probation, saying Ms. Butina was not accused of espionage or any crime other than failing to register with the Justice Department. “Nothing about Maria has been secret,” said one of her lawyers, Alfred Carry.

He sought to distinguish her from Russians who carried out the Kremlin’s plan to interfere in the 2016 race. While “we feel wronged and we should feel wronged about the attacks on our democracy,” he said, “she is not a proxy for the Russian government.”

Robert Driscoll, another defense lawyer, said the government’s expert “did not name anyone who was spotted or assessed” by Ms. Butina. “Anyone who thinks that someone who wasn’t Russian would be in this situation is fooling themselves,” he said.