International
Putin grants Russian citizenship to American whistleblower Snowden
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Sept 26 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin on Monday granted Russian citizenship to former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, nine years after he exposed the scale of secret surveillance operations by the National Security Agency (NSA).
Snowden, 39, fled the United States and was granted asylum in Russia after leaking secret files in 2013 that revealed extensive domestic and international surveillance operations conducted by the NSA, where he worked.
US authorities have been seeking his return to the United States for years to face a criminal trial on espionage charges.
Snowden’s name appeared without Kremlin comment in a Putin decree granting citizenship to 72 foreign-born individuals.
Snowden later released a message, essentially an updated version of a November 2020 tweet, saying he wanted his family to stay together and asking for privacy.
“After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our SONS,” it was written on Twitter.
“After two years of waiting and almost ten years of exile, some stability will make a difference for my family. I pray for privacy for them – and for all of us.”
The new tweet did not refer to the Kremlin leader’s decree, but was attached to a 2020 tweet in which Snowden said he and his family were applying for dual US-Russian citizenship.
The news prompted some Russians to jokingly wonder if Snowden would be called up for military service, five days after Putin announced Russia’s first public mobilization since World War II to support its shaky occupation of Ukraine.
“Will Snowden be drafted?” Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state media RT and a vocal supporter of Putin, wrote darkly on her Telegram channel.
Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the RIA news agency that his client could not be summoned because he had not previously served in the Russian military.
He said Snowden’s wife, Lindsay Mills, who gave birth to a son in 2020, would also apply for citizenship.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said he was not aware of any change in Snowden’s status as a US citizen.
“I’m aware of the fact that he’s kind of renounced his American citizenship. I don’t know that he’s renounced it,” Price said at a news conference.
Russia granted Snowden permanent residency in 2020, paving the way for him to obtain Russian citizenship.
That year a US appeals court found that the program that Snowden had exposed was illegal and that US intelligence officials who publicly defended him were not telling the truth.
Putin, a former Russian spy chief, said in 2017 that Snowden, who keeps a low profile while living in Russia, was wrong to leak US secrets but was not a traitor.
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Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Grant McCool and Rosalba O’Brien
Our standards: Thomson Reuters Fiduciary Principles.
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