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| Photo Credit: AP. |
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to former U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden, according to a decree signed Monday by the Russian leader.
Snowden is
one of 75 foreign citizens listed by the decree as being granted Russian
citizenship. The decree was published on an official government website.
Snowden, a
former contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, has been living in
Russia since 2013 to escape prosecution in the U.S. after leaking classified
documents detailing government surveillance programs.
He was
granted permanent Russian residency in 2020 and said at the time that he
planned to apply for Russian citizenship without renouncing his U.S.
citizenship.
Snowden’s
lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti that the
former contractor’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.
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 the
U.S. if he’s guaranteed a fair trial.
The move
comes as Moscow is mobilizing reservists for what the Kremlin calls a “special
military operation” in 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.
Snowden,
however, has never served in the Russian armed forces, so he is not eligible to
be mobilized, his lawyer Kucherena told the Interfax news agency. Having
previous combat or military service experience has been considered the main
criteria in the call-up.
Snowden
leaked documents on the NSA’s collection of huge amounts of data passing
through U.S. internet companies. He also released details about the classified
U.S. intelligence budget and the extent of American surveillance on foreign
officials, including the leaders of U.S.-allied countries.
Snowden has
said he made the disclosures because he believed the U.S. intelligence
community had gone too far and wrongly infringed on civil liberties. He also
has said he didn’t believe the administration of former President Barack Obama,
which was in office when he leaked the records to journalists, would act had he
made an internal whistleblower complaint instead.
Snowden’s
decision to turn against the NSA came when he used his programming skills to 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, Snowden said he began to understand the extent of his
government’s stomping on civil liberties and became sullen, “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.”
He 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 U.S.
political parties say he endangered global security by exposing important
programs.
Snowden was
charged in 2013 with unauthorized disclosure of U.S. national security and intelligence
information as well as theft of government property. The Justice Department
also sued to stop 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 Snowden’s citizenship to the Justice
Department, citing the pending criminal charges.
Snowden’s
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.
Associated
Press writers Nomaan Merchant in Washington and Frank Bajak in Boston
contributed to this report.