Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday granted citizenship to Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked information about top-secret US surveillance programs and is still wanted by Washington on charges of espionage
The decree signed by Putin covered 72 foreigners, but Snowden was the most prominent. Russia granted him asylum in 2013 after he fled the United States to avoid prosecution.
Snowden, 39, who is considered a whistleblower, was granted permanent residency in Russia in 2020, and his lawyers said at the time that he was applying for a Russian passport without renouncing his US citizenship.
His lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told state news agency RIA Novosti on Monday that his wife, Lindsay Mills, is now applying for Russian citizenship. Mills joined Snowden in Moscow in 2014. They married in 2017. Snowden tweeted Monday night that they were parents to two boys.
After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to separate from our CHILDREN.
After two years of waiting and almost ten years of exile, some stability will make all the difference for my family. I pray for privacy for them and for all of us. pic.twitter.com/qLfp47uzZ4
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 26, 2022
Kucherena said Snowden will not be subject to the partial military mobilization Putin ordered last week to help Russia’s war in Ukraine. Only men with prior military experience are supposed to be subpoenaed, although there have been widespread reports of subpoenas to many others, and Snowden has never served in the Russian military.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred questions about his new status to prosecutors seeking his extradition. “Because I believe there have been criminal charges against him, we would refer you to the Department of Justice for more information on that,” Jean-Pierre said.
Snowden’s revelations, first published in The Washington Post and The Guardian, were among the most consequential intelligence breaches in US history. It revealed the existence of the NSA’s collection of millions of Americans’ phone records, a program that was later found illegal by a federal appeals court and has since been shut down.
He also revealed details of the industry’s collaboration with the NSA’s intelligence gathering in a separate program. These revelations greatly damaged the intelligence community’s relationship with the US technology industry.
In 2017, Putin said in a documentary made by American director Oliver Stone that Snowden was “not a traitor” for leaking government secrets.
“Think what you will about Snowden and Russia,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, wrote in a tweet Monday. “He did an immense public service by exposing mass surveillance programs that several courts later found unconstitutional.”
The NSA, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment Monday on Snowden’s new status. But Sue Gordon, former senior deputy director of national intelligence, said his acceptance of Russian citizenship “removes any illusion that what he was doing [through his disclosures] was to help the United States.”
“I think it’s a very questionable decision,” he continued, “knowing what we know about what Russia is perpetrating, to become a Russian citizen right now. I think it diminishes any patriotic argument that he might have made then.”
Snowden explained his decision to apply for dual citizenship on Twitter in 2020.
“After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to separate from our son. Therefore, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, we are applying for dual Russian and Northern citizenship -American,” he wrote.
“Lindsay and I will continue to be Americans, raising our son with all the American values ​​we hold dear, including the freedom to speak his mind. And I look forward to the day when he can return to the United States, because the whole family can get together,” he added.
James R. Clapper, a former director of national intelligence, acknowledged Monday that the collection of bulk phone records was an area where “we probably should have been more transparent” given the program’s focus on Americans .
“But he exposed a lot of other things that damaged foreign intelligence capabilities that had nothing to do with so-called domestic surveillance,” Clapper said.
Clapper said, “What a great time to become a Russian citizen.”
Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.
War in Ukraine: what you need to know
The last: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” of troops in an address to the nation on September 21, framing the move as an attempt to defend Russian sovereignty against the West, which seeks to use Ukraine as a tool to ” divide and destroy Russia.” “. Follow our live updates here.
The fight: A successful Ukrainian counter-offensive has forced a major Russian retreat in the region north-east of Kharkiv in recent days, as troops fled towns and villages they had occupied since the first days of the war and abandoned large quantities of military equipment
Annexation referendums: The staged referendums, which would be illegal under international law, will be held from September 23 to 27 in the separatist regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, according to Russian news agencies. The Moscow-appointed administration will hold another referendum in Kherson starting Friday.
Pictures: Washington Post photographers have been on the ground since the beginning of the war; here are some of his most powerful works.
How you can help: Here are ways that those in the United States can help support the Ukrainian people, as well as what people around the world have given.
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