Key Points
- Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted citizenship to former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden
- The 39-year-old was given asylum in Russia after leaking secret files in 2013 that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations
Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted citizenship to former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, nine years after he exposed the scale of secret surveillance operations by the National Security Agency (NSA).
The 39-year-old fled the United States and was after leaking secret files in 2013 that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the NSA, where he worked.
US authorities have for years wanted him returned to the country to face a criminal trial on espionage charges.
There was no immediate reaction from Snowden, whose name appeared without Kremlin comment in a decree from Mr Putin conferring citizenship on a list of 72 foreign-born individuals.
The news prompted some Russians to jokingly ask whether Snowden would be called up for military service, five days after Mr Putin announced 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 RIA news agency that his client could not be called up because he had not previously served in the Russian army.
Anatoly Kucherena is Edward Snowden's Russian lawyer. Source: Getty / Anadolu Agency
He was granted permanent residency in 2020 and said at the time that he planned to apply for Russian citizenship, without renouncing his US citizenship.
That year a US appeals court found the program Snowden had exposed was unlawful and that the US intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Monday that he was not aware of any immediate change in Snowden's citizenship status.
"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," he said.
"Our position has not changed. Mr Snowden should return to the United States where he should face justice as any other American citizen would."
Mr Putin, a former Russian spy chief, said in 2017 that Snowden, who keeps a low profile while living in Russia, was wrong to leak US secrets but was not a traitor.
