Edward Snowden asylum in Russia

Russia first received information about Snowden when he was in Hong Kong. At that time, they were told that a person who wanted to fight against human rights violations wanted to seek asylum in Russia. In 2017, during The Putin Interviews with director Oliver Stone, the Russian president Vladimir Putin described how Russia became involved in the Snowden saga. Russia did not want to get involved because of its strained relationship with the United States which it did not wish to worsen. Thereafter they learnt that Snowden was on a plane bound for Moscow, to transfer to another plane bound for Latin America. Most of this information was received through informal channels including information leaked to the press. While he was aboard the plane, his destination countries grew reluctant to allow him in, and Snowden was thus stuck in the transit area of Moscow Sheremetyevo International Airport. While in the airport, U.S. authorities asked Russia to extradite Snowden. However this was not possible as Russia had proposed a treaty on cooperation in legal matters, requiring mutual extradition of criminals, which the U.S. had not agreed upon. Further, United States had never extradited any Russian criminal who had taken asylum in USA, hence Snowden's extradition would have been unprecedented. Snowden had not committed a crime as per Russian law.[3]

Snowden left the Moscow airport on August 1 after 39 days in the transit section. He was granted temporary asylum in Russia for one year,[4] with extensions possible.[5] According to his Russian lawyer, Snowden went to an undisclosed location for security reasons.[6] The White House stated that it was "extremely disappointed," and cancelled a previously scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.[7][8] Additionally, Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham urged President Obama to boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, but House Speaker John Boehner, also a Republican, rejected that idea as "dead wrong."[9]

In late July 2013, Lonnie Snowden said he believed his son would be better off staying in Russia, and didn't believe he would receive a fair trial in the U.S.[10] In mid-October, he visited his son in Moscow, later telling the press that he was pleased with Edward's situation, and still believed Russia was the best choice for his asylum, saying he wouldn't have to worry about people "rushing across the border to render him." Lonnie Snowden commented that his son was living comfortably in Russia and found Moscow "modern and sophisticated."[11] Edward Snowden's Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, announced on October 31 that his client had found a website maintenance job at one of Russia's largest websites, but declined to identify the site. Jesselyn Radack, one of Snowden's American lawyers, said she was unaware of any new job.[12] Asked about this by The Moscow Times in June 2014, The Guardian correspondent Luke Harding claimed that "Kucherena is completely unreliable as a source. We [The Guardian] did the rounds of Russian IT companies when he made that claim last year and none of them—none of the big ones, at least—confirmed this."[13]

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who had traveled to Russia to give Snowden a whistleblower award, said that Snowden gave no storage devices such as hard drives or USB flash drives to Russia or China, and had carried four blank laptops with him to Hong Kong and Moscow as a diversion. U.S. officials said they assumed that any classified materials downloaded by Snowden had fallen into the hands of China and Russia, though they acknowledged they had no proof of this.[14] In an October 2013 interview, Snowden maintained that he did not bring any classified material into Russia "because it wouldn't serve the public interest." He added, "There's a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents."[15] In June 2015, however, The Sunday Times reported that British government officials anonymously claimed to the paper that Russia and China had cracked an encrypted cache of files taken by Snowden, forcing the withdrawal of British spies from live operations.[16] The BBC also stated that their sources told them British intelligence assets had been moved as a precaution after the Snowden leaks.[17] Glenn Greenwald charged that the report contained fabrications and did nothing more than quote anonymous British officials; he said parts were removed from the original post without The Times saying it did so.[18]

WikiLeaks released video of Snowden on October 11 taken during the Sam Adams Award reception in Moscow, his first public appearance in three months. Former U.S. government officials attending the ceremony said they saw no evidence Snowden was under the control of Russian security services. The whistleblower group said he was in good spirits, looked well, and still believes he was right to release the NSA documents.[19] In the video, Snowden said "people all over the world are coming to realize" that the NSA's surveillance programs put people in danger, hurt the U.S. and its economy, and "limit our ability to speak and think and live and be creative, to have relationships and associate freely" as well as putting people "at risk of coming into conflict with our own government."[20]

On October 31, German lawmaker Hans-Christian Ströbele traveled to Moscow to meet with Snowden, whom he invited to testify before the German parliament to assist investigations into NSA surveillance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone since 2002.[21][22][23] After the visit, Snowden indicated a willingness to testify, though not from Moscow as Germany requested. Snowden said he would rather give testimony before the U.S. Congress, his second choice being Berlin.[24]

Also in October, Glenn Greenwald stated that the U.S. revoked Snowden's passport while he was in transit to Latin America and threatened other countries that might offer safe passage.[25] WikiLeaks representative Sarah Harrison, who accompanied Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow, left Russia in early November after waiting until she felt confident he had situated himself and was free from government interference.[26]

On December 17, 2013, Snowden wrote an open letter to the people of Brazil offering to assist the Brazilian government in investigating allegations of U.S. spying, and added that he continued to seek, and would require, asylum.[27] Snowden wrote, "Until a country grants permanent political asylum, the U.S. government will continue to interfere with my ability to speak ... going so far as to force down the Presidential Plane of Evo Morales to prevent me from traveling to Latin America!"[28] Brazil had been in an uproar since Snowden revealed that the U.S. was spying on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, her senior advisors, and Brazil's national oil company, Petrobras.[29] Rousseff and officials of the Brazilian foreign ministry said in response that they could not consider asylum for Snowden because they had not received any formal request.[30] A representative of the foreign ministry said that a fax requesting asylum had been sent to the Brazilian embassy in Moscow in July but it had not been signed and could not be authenticated.[31] David Miranda, the Brazilian partner of Glenn Greenwald, launched an Internet petition urging the Brazilian president to consider offering Snowden asylum.[32]

Snowden met with Barton Gellman of The Washington Post six months after the disclosure for an exclusive interview spanning 14 hours, his first since being granted temporary asylum. Snowden talked about his life in Russia as "an indoor cat," reflected on his time as an NSA contractor, and discussed at length the revelations of global surveillance and their reverberations. Snowden said, "In terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished ... I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated."[33] He commented "I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA ... I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don't realize it." On the accusation from former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden that he had defected, Snowden stated, "If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public."[33] In 2014, Snowden said that he lives "a surprisingly open life" in Russia and that he is recognized when he goes to computer stores.[34]

In October 2020, Snowden was granted permanent residency in Russia. His lawyer said that granting an unlimited residence permit became possible after changes in the migration legislation of the Russian Federation in 2019.[68][69][70]

In November 2020, Snowden announced that he and his wife, Lindsay, who is expecting their son in late December, were applying for dual U.S.-Russian citizenship in order not to be separated from him "in this era of pandemics and closed borders." Their son will be entitled to Russian citizenship by birthright.[2]