On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to former United States (US) National Security Agency (NSA) contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has been living in exile in Russia since 2013, alongside 71 other foreigners.
“After two years of waiting and nearly ten years of exile, a little stability will make a difference for my family,” he tweeted, while adding to a 2020 thread that announced his decision to seek dual citizenship.
In a press conference on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov mentioned that Snowden was granted citizenship at his own request. He also said that “there are no such plans” of a meeting between Putin and Snowden.
After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our SONS.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 26, 2022
After two years of waiting and nearly ten years of exile, a little stability will make a difference for my family. I pray for privacy for them—and for us all. https://t.co/24NUK21TAo pic.twitter.com/qLfp47uzZ4
In 2013, Snowden exposed highly-classified domestic and international mass surveillance tactics used by the US and the United Kingdom (UK) through documents given to The Washington Post and The Guardian, including spying on then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Though the intelligence community accused him of endangering the lives of security forces and secret operations, he maintained that that his actions were necessary to shed light on how they had encroached on civil liberties.
After a two-year bipartisan investigation in 2016, the US House Intelligence Committee released a report claiming that Snowden making 1.5 million classified documents public was “the largest and most damaging public release of classified information in US intelligence history.” It also stated that the leak “caused tremendous damage to national security, and the vast majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests — they pertain instead to military, defence, and intelligence programmes of great interest to America’s adversaries.”
The report also accused Snowden of being in touch with Russian officials since moving to Russia. The former NSA contractor refuted the allegations, saying, “They claim without evidence that I’m in cahoots with the Russians.”
You can read Ben Rhodes in his own words, bragging in his book about he forced the Cubans to withdraw the guarantee of safe passage they had given Snowden to allow him to leave Russia, as he was desperately trying to do.https://t.co/x1pePbAZBm
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 26, 2022
Later, in 2020, the US Court of Appeals found the NSA’s surveillance of millions of American telephones to be unlawful. At the same time, former US President Donald Trump was sharply criticised for promising to take a “very good look” at granting pardon to Snowden.
The US has wanted him to return to face a trial on two counts of violation of the Espionage Act and one count of theft of government property, which amounts to a nearly 30-year imprisonment.
Following the news of Snowden’s Russian citizenship, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Washington’s position remains unchanged. “Mr. Snowden should return to the United States, where he should face justice as any other American citizen would,” he stated. “Perhaps the only thing that has changed is that, as a result of his Russian citizenship, apparently now he may well be conscripted to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine,” Price added, referring to Putin mobilising 300,000 troops with a prior military service record to Ukraine last week.
However, Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told Russian state-owned media RIA Novosti that he is not currently eligible to be drafted. “He did not serve in the Russian army, therefore, according to our current legislation, he does not fall into this category of citizens, which is now called up,” she asserted. She also revealed that Snowden’s wife, Lindsay Mills, would now apply for Russian citizenship.
Think what you want about Snowden and Russia. He did an immense public service by exposing mass surveillance programs that multiple courts later found to be unconstitutional. The newspapers that happily collected prizes for their reporting on the abuses should say this clearly.
— Jameel Jaffer (@JameelJaffer) September 26, 2022
Snowden has publicly maintained his silence on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine despite previously blaming the media for “pushing” the crisis. However, three days after the Ukraine war began, he tweeted, “I’ve just lost any confidence I had that sharing my thinking on this particular topic continues to be useful because I called it wrong.”
Following his disclosure in 2013, Snowden fled to Hong Kong en route to Ecuador but got stuck at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport after the US Department of State revoked his passport. Russia then granted him asylum and later permanent residency in 2020.
In an interview in 2017, Putin admitted that Snowden was wrong to leak secret information about US Intelligence but maintained that “he was not a traitor.”
I think Snowden initially did a good thing in revealing illegal surveillance, but he became too in love with the hype around himself. Part of it was the media, but a big part was his own conduct too.
— Oliver Jia (オリバー・ジア) (@OliverJia1014) September 26, 2022
He needs to be careful not to become another mouthpiece for Russian propaganda.
Though Snowden keeps a low profile in Russia, he has become a popular advocate for privacy, making remote appearances at various forums from Russia. However, he has been condemned by intelligence officials for harming global security operations.
In this respect, former US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who was serving at the time of the exposés, remarked that Snowden’s citizenship came at a “rather curious timing.” “It raises the question — again — about just what he shared with the Russians,” he said. Though Clapper admitted that “we probably should have been more transparent” while collecting American phone records, he argued that Snowden “exposed so much else that damaged foreign intelligence capabilities that had nothing to do with so-called domestic surveillance.”
3/ Soon after, Snowden took it upon himself to expose Clapper's lie, as well as a massive illegal surveillance program.
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) September 26, 2022
At the time, folks were not used to the fact that people like Clapper would go to Congress and lie. Now everyone understands that this is the default position.
In a similar vein, former principal deputy director of national intelligence Sue Gordon remarked that Snowden’s acceptance of Russian citizenship is a “very questionable decision” that “takes away any illusion that what he was doing [through his disclosures] was to help America.” “Knowing what we know about what Russia perpetrates, to become a Russian citizen right now. I think it diminishes any patriotic argument that he might have made back then,” she stressed.
Snowden has made it clear he would like to return to the US to reunite with his family if he is accorded a fair trial.