Snowden Granted Russian Citizenship

Snowden, a former contractor with the National Security Agency, has been living in Russia since 2013 to escape prosecution in America after leaking classified documents detailing government surveillance programs.

AP, file
The former National Security Agency systems analyst, Edward Snowden, at Moscow, October 11, 2013. AP, file

Updated at 5:12 p.m. E.D.T.

MOSCOW — President Putin has granted Russian citizenship to the erstwhile American security contractor, Edward Snowden, according to a decree signed by the Russian leader on Monday.

Mr. Snowden, 39, is one of 75 foreign nationals listed by the decree as being granted Russian citizenship. The decree was published on an official government website.

Mr. Snowden, a former contractor with the National Security Agency, has been living in Russia since 2013 to escape prosecution in America after leaking classified documents detailing government surveillance programs.

While Mr. Snowden is considered by supporters to be a righteous whistleblower who wanted to protect American civil liberties, American intelligence officials have accused him of putting personnel at risk and damaging national security. He currently faces charges in the United States that could result in decades in prison.

“Our position has not changed,” a State Department spokesman, Ned Price, said Monday. “Mr. Snowden should return to the United States where he should face justice as any other American citizen would.”

Mr. Snowden becomes a Russian citizen as Moscow is mobilizing reservists to go to Ukraine. In Russia, almost every man is considered a reservist until age 65, and officials on Monday stressed that men with dual citizenship are also eligible for the military call-up.

Mr. Snowden, however, has never served in the Russian armed forces, so he is not eligible to be mobilized, his lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told the Interfax news agency. Having previous combat or military service experience has been considered the main criterion in the call-up.

Mr. Kucherena told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti that Mr. Snowden’s wife, Lindsay Mills, an American who has been living with him in Russia, will also be applying for a Russian passport. The couple had a child in December 2020.

Mr. Snowden, who has kept a low profile in Russia and occasionally criticized Russian government policies on social media, said in 2019 that he was willing to return to America if he’s guaranteed a fair trial. He hasn’t commented on being granted Russian citizenship.

His acceptance of Russian citizenship is likely to drive more criticism against him from people who say he has remained silent on issues such as the conflict in Ukraine.

Mr. Snowden leaked documents on the National Security Agency’s collection of data passing through the infrastructure of American phone and internet companies. 

He also released details about the classified American intelligence budget and the extent of American surveillance on foreign officials, including the leaders of U.S.-allied countries.

Snowden says he made the disclosures because he believed the American intelligence community had gone too far and wrongly infringed on civil liberties. He also has said he didn’t believe the administration of President Obama, which was in office when Mr. Snowden leaked the records to journalists, would act had he made an internal whistleblower complaint instead.

Mr. Snowden’s decision to turn against the NSA came when he used his programming skills to create a repository of classified in-house notes on the agency’s global snooping and as he built a backup system for agency data, he wrote in his 2019 book “Permanent Record.”

Reading through the repository, Mr. Snowden said he began to understand the extent of his government’s stomping on civil liberties and became “cursed with the knowledge that all of us had been reduced to something like children, who’d been forced to live the rest of their lives under omniscient parental supervision.”

Mr. Snowden has since become a well-known speaker on privacy and intelligence, appearing remotely at many events from Russia. But he also remains controversial among members of the intelligence community, and current and former officials from both American political parties say he endangered global security by exposing important programs. An American damage assessment of his disclosures is still classified.

Mr. Snowden was charged in 2013 with unauthorized disclosure of U.S. national security and intelligence information as well as theft of government property. The three charges each carry a maximum 10-year penalty.

The Justice Department also sued to stop Mr. Snowden from collecting profits on his memoir, saying he had violated his nondisclosure agreements with intelligence agencies.

The White House on Monday referred comment on Mr. Snowden’s citizenship to the Justice Department, citing the pending criminal charges.


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