Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday granting Russian citizenship to the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Snowden, 39, a former US intelligence contractor, has been living in\u00a0Russia\u00a0since 2013 to escape prosecution in the US after leaking secret files, published by the Guardian, that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the US National Security Agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2020, Snowden said that he and his then-pregnant wife were applying for Russian citizenship in order not to be separated from their future son in an era of pandemics and closed borders.\u00a0Russia\u00a0granted him permanent residency rights the same year, paving the way for him to obtain Russian citizenship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAfter years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our son. That\u2019s why, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, we\u2019re applying for dual US-Russian citizenship,\u201d Snowden wrote on Twitter at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLindsay and I will remain Americans, raising our son with all the values of the America we love, including the freedom to speak his mind. And I look forward to the day I can return to the States, so the whole family can be reunited. Our greatest wish is that, wherever our son lives, he feels at home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was no immediate reaction from Snowden, whose name appeared on a list of 72 foreign-born individuals for whom Putin was granting citizenship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin\u2019s decree to grant Snowden citizenship quickly led to quips on social media that the whistleblower will soon be conscripted into the Russian army to fight in Ukraine as part of the country\u2019s nationwide mobilisation campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWill Snowden be mobilised?\u201d wrote Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the state-owned broadcaster RT on her Telegram channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Snowden\u2019s Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told the state news agency Ria Novosti that his client could not be drafted because he has not previously served in the Russian armed forces. The lawyer added that Snowden\u2019s wife, Lindsay Mills, was also applying for Russian citizenship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The whistleblower largely keeps a low profile while living in Russia, occasionally posting photographs of his family in Moscow. He has said in 2019 that he was willing to return to the US if he\u2019s guaranteed a fair trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Snowden, who has previously criticised Kremlin\u2019s human rights record, has not commented in public about the country\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. Prior to the war, he repeatedly voiced doubts that Russia would start a war, blaming the media for \u201cpushing\u201d the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve just lost any confidence I had that sharing my thinking on this particular topic continues to be useful because I called it wrong,\u201d Snowden wrote on Twitter on 27 February, three days after Russia sent its troops to Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday granting Russian citizenship to the US whistleblower Edward Snowden. Snowden, 39, a former US intelligence contractor, has been living in\u00a0Russia\u00a0since 2013 to escape prosecution in the US after leaking secret files, published by the Guardian, that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":25962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11830,8217,4321,10387,8023,10767,11067,5455,9127,12680,4028,3577,5563,6566,10840,10954,5252,1152,10776,11018,10634,6220,5340,7693,2451,11167,71,11541,3457,5217,5655,5349,10841,11581,9178,5350,5180,9262,6348,8022,694,5251,2857,3954,594],"class_list":["post-25961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-armed-forces","tag-army","tag-broadcaster","tag-campaign","tag-citizenship","tag-conflict","tag-escape","tag-family","tag-february","tag-files","tag-freedom","tag-future","tag-grant","tag-grants","tag-human-rights","tag-international","tag-invasion","tag-kremlin","tag-lawyer","tag-leaking","tag-lost","tag-love","tag-moscow","tag-national-security","tag-pregnant","tag-prosecution","tag-putin","tag-rt","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-security","tag-social-media","tag-surveillance","tag-trial","tag-troops","tag-twitter","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-us-whistleblower-edward-snowden","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-war","tag-whistleblower","tag-will","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52296,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25961\/revisions\/52296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}