Putin on Monday granted citizenship to Edward Snowden, the controversial US whistleblower.
This move comes amid historic tensions between Washington and Moscow.
Snowden, who leaked classified documents about the US government's mass surveillance, has lived in Russia since 2013.
Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to US whistleblower Edward Snowden on Monday, according to a decree published to a government website. The move comes amid historic tensions between Washington and Moscow.
Snowden — a former National Security Agency contractor — has been living in Russia for nearly a decade and was granted permanent residency in 2020.
In 2013, he leaked highly classified documents about the US government's mass surveillance to journalists at the Guardian and Washington Post. Snowden, who was charged with espionage over the leak, fled the US. He was ultimately granted asylum in Russia.
Snowden remains a controversial figure in the US. Some have characterized his actions, which revealed vast surveillance operations both in the US and abroad, as a patriotic move that helped reveal government overreach. But others have decried Snowden as a traitor.
In 2020, Snowden applied for Russian citizenship but underscored that he was not moving to renounce his US citizenship. At the time, he tweeted, "After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our son. That's why, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, we're applying...
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