August 1, 2013
Russia Grants Snowden 1-Year Asylum
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
nytimes.com
MOSCOW — After a month holed up in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor wanted by the United States for leaking details of surveillance programs, has received temporary refugee status in Russia and left the airport, his lawyer said Thursday.
The movement from the airport’s international transit zone was a significant change in Mr. Snowden’s status for the first time since he left the United States and began leaking details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance.
The refugee status in Russia was the first formal support from another government for Mr. Snowden, 30, and seems likely to elicit strong objections from the United States.
The temporary refugee status allows Mr. Snowden to move freely within the country and is valid for one year, Anatoly Kucherena, a Russian lawyer assisting Mr. Snowden with the asylum request, said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Snowden has left the airport, Mr. Kucherena said, but declined to say where he had gone. “Yes, it is true he is out,” he said, but declined to disclose details.
Mr. Snowden had lived in the international transit zone of the airport since he arrived on June 23, one step ahead of an extradition request filed by the United States in his first stopover in Hong Kong.
For reasons that were unclear, the Russian Federal Migration Service delayed for longer than the typical week the processing of his temporary asylum application.
While the bureaucratic process has unfolded slowly, Russian officials, including President Vladimir V. Putin, have made clear that they have no intention of extraditing him to the United States — a position that has infuriated the Obama administration.
Mr. Putin has insisted that Mr. Snowden’s presence in Russia should not harm relations between the two countries, even as the White House has signaled that President Obama, amid mounting frustration, may cancel a planned summit meeting in Moscow in September.
The United States State Department had said that any move outside the airport — signaling a formal acceptance of Mr. Snowden as an asylum seeker — would be “deeply disappointing,” but has not publicly laid out any ramifications for Russia. |
