Vladimir Putin grants Russian citizenship to whistleblower Edward Snowden

President Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to whistleblower and former worker of the American NSA Edward Snowden, a refugee in Russia since 2013 after leaving the US, based on a decree printed on Monday. Edward Snowden’s identify seems alongside dozens of others on this decree printed on the Russian authorities’s web site.

Learn additionally: Edward Snowden: ‘Do not cease preventing to your freedom’

Edward Snowden, 39, is needed by the US for having transmitted to the press tens of hundreds of paperwork from the American Nationwide Safety Company (NSA) proving the extent of the digital surveillance exercised by Washington.

These revelations had then aroused very sturdy tensions between the US and their allies and the choice of the Russian authorities to grant him a residence allow had angered Washington.

“After years of being separated from our mother and father, my spouse and I’ve no need to be separated from our sons,” Edward Snowden tweeted. “After two years of ready and almost ten years in exile, somewhat stability will make a distinction for my household,” he added.

State Division spokesman Ned Worth mentioned Monday that Edward Snowden, nonetheless charged in the US, retained his US citizenship.

Not mobilized by the Russian military

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov advised the Ria Novosti information company that Russian citizenship was granted to Edward Snowden at his personal request. The whistleblower’s Russian lawyer, Anatoli Koutcherena, for his half specified that Edward Snowden wouldn’t be affected by the mobilization order for the offensive in Ukraine, decreed by Vladimir Putin final week for sure classes of Russians.

Learn additionally: Daniel Ellsberg: “Whistleblowers stay important”

“He didn’t serve within the Russian military and due to this fact, based on our present laws, he doesn’t fall into this class of residents who are actually referred to as up,” he advised the Ria Novosti company.

Based on the lawyer, Lindsay Mills, his companion, additionally utilized to obtain Russian citizenship. The couple married in 2017 and have since had two sons. In 2020, when the primary was born, Edward Snowden defined that he was asking for Russian nationality in order that the household may very well be collectively extra simply, particularly within the face of anti-Covid restrictions on the time.

“Lindsay and I’ll stay Individuals,” he mentioned, nonetheless, “elevating our son with all of the values ​​of America that we love, together with the liberty to talk our minds.” “And I sit up for the day once I can return to the US, in order that the entire household could be reunited.”

Edward Snowden, disadvantaged of his American passport on the request of Washington, discovered himself in Moscow in Might 2013 after arriving there from Hong Kong and intending to search out refuge in Latin America. He finally discovered himself stranded in Russia, the place he was granted asylum.