Moscow, Sep 26: Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to former US 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 US 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.
He hasn't commented on being granted Russian citizenship.
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 mobilised, 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's collection of huge amounts of data passing through US internet companies. He also released details about the classified US intelligence budget and the extent of American surveillance on foreign officials, including the leaders of US-allied countries.
Snowden has said he made the disclosures because he believed the US 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 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.
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Mumbai(PTI): Outgoing Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who returned to Mumbai from New Delhi on Friday morning, is travelling to his native village in Satara district amid continuing suspense over his successor a week after the assembly poll results.
Shinde had told reporters in New Delhi on late Thursday night that the next meeting of the Mahayuti alliance on government formation will be held in Mumbai on Friday.
However, the caretaker CM, who heads the Shiv Sena, is travelling to his native village Dare in Satara district in western Maharashtra and the meeting is now expected to take place on Sunday, the sources said.
The Shiv Sena leader has repeatedly said he would not be an obstacle in the government formation and abide by the decisions taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the next chief minister.
Different viewpoints are emerging in the Shiv Sena over Shinde's place in the next government to be headed by the BJP, the biggest constituent in the Mahayuti, which posted a thumping win in the just-held assembly polls.
Many leaders in the Shiv Sena are asking Shinde to accept deputy CM's post if offered by the BJP. However, another section feels it wouldn't be right for him to accept No. 2 position after serving as CM for more than two-and-a-half years, the sources said.
"The government formation process will start after the BJP announces its legislature party leader," they said.
During his Delhi trip, Shinde had met Shah and discussed formation of the next government in the state. His deputies in the outgoing state cabinet Devendra Fadnavis (BJP) and Ajit Pawar (NCP) had also met the senior BJP leader.
Talking to reporters in the national capital, Shinde called the discussion “good and positive”.
Shinde, Fadnavis and Pawar had also met BJP president J P Nadda.