Edward Snowden Granted Russian Citizenship by Vladimir Putin

Edward Joseph Snowden is an American-born and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 when he was an employee and subcontractor.

His illegal disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many runs by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments, and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.

Edward Snowden Granted Russian Citizenship by Vladimir Putin

President Vladimir Putin on Monday granted Russian citizenship to former U.S. 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 given asylum in Russia after leaking secret files in 2013 that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the NSA, where he worked.

U.S. authorities have for years wanted him returned to the United States to face a criminal trial on espionage charges.

There was no immediate reaction from Snowden, whose name appeared without Kremlin comment in a Putin decree conferring citizenship on a list of 72 foreign-born people.

The news prompted some Russians to jokingly ask whether Snowden would be called up for military service, five days after Putin announced Russia’s first public mobilization since World War Two to shore up its faltering invasion of Ukraine.

“Will Snowden be drafted?” Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the state media outlet RT and a vocal Putin supporter, wrote with dark humour on her Telegram channel.

Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the RIA news agency that his client could not be called up because he had not previously served in the Russian army.

He said that Snowden’s wife Lindsay Mills, who gave birth to a son in 2020, would also apply for citizenship.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said he was unaware of any change to Snowden’s status as a U.S. citizen.

“I am familiar with the fact that he has in some ways denounced his American citizenship. I don’t know that he’s renounced it,” Price said in a press briefing.

Russia granted Snowden permanent residency rights in 2020, paving the way for him to obtain Russian citizenship.