Snowden seeks Russian citizenship

MOSCOW >> Edward Snowden has said that he never quite feels at home in Moscow. He looks away from traffic while crossing the street to avoid the cameras that Russian drivers often affix to their windshields, he wrote in a memoir published last year. And when going outside, he noted, he changes his appearance, down to the rhythm and pace of his walk.

But Monday he said he was applying for Russian citizenship.

Snowden, the former intelligence contractor whose disclosures of mass U. S. surveillance turned him into one of the highest-profile fugitives on the planet, said that he and his American wife were taking the step because they were expecting their first child. He described the move as a practical measure to give his family greater freedom crossing borders.

“After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our son,” Snowden wrote on Twitter. “That’s why, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, we’re applying for dual US-Russian citizenship.”

Snowden found himself stranded in Moscow in 2013 on a layover en route from Hong Kong to Ecuador. He had planned to seek asylum in the South American country, but the United States revoked his passport before he could make it there. After 40 days in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo International Airport, Snowden decided to stay in Russia, where he was granted asylum, and he has remained in Moscow ever since.

In 2013, he was charged with violating the Espionage Act, which carries a prison sentence. Sheltered from U. S. prosecution in Russia, he has become both a living symbol of President Vladimir Putin’s relish in needling the United States and a hero to many who say he laid bare U. S. intelligence agencies’ power to monitor people’s online activity around the world.

President Donald Trump said in August that he would “take a very good look at” a pardon for Snowden, but no such move appears imminent.