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September 26 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin granted Russian citizenship to former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on Monday, nine years after revealing the extent of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) covert surveillance operations .
Snowden, 39, fled the United States and was granted asylum in Russia after leaking secret files in 2013 that exposed extensive domestic and international surveillance operations by the NSA, where he worked.
US authorities have for years wanted him returned to the United States to face a criminal trial for espionage.
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There was no immediate reaction from Snowden, whose name appeared without Kremlin comment in a Putin decree granting citizenship to a list of 72 foreign-born people.
The news prompted some Russians to jokingly ask if Snowden would be called up for military service, five days after Putin announced Russia’s first public mobilization since World War II to shore up his faltering invasion of Ukraine.
“Will Snowden be drafted?” Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state media RT and a staunch supporter of Putin, wrote with dark humor on her Telegram channel.
Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the RIA news agency that his client could not be called because he had never served in the Russian army.
He said Snowden’s wife, Lindsay Mills, who gave birth to a son in 2020, would also apply for citizenship.
Russia granted Snowden the right of permanent residency in 2020, paving the way for him to obtain Russian citizenship.
That year, a U.S. appeals court found that the program Snowden exposed was illegal and that the U.S. intelligence chiefs who publicly defended him were not telling the truth.
Putin, a former Russian spy chief, said in 2017 that Snowden, who keeps a low profile while living in Russia, was wrong to leak American secrets but was not a traitor.
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Reuters reporting; Editing by Mark Trevelyan
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