Snowden ‘must stop whistleblowing’ to stay in Russia
Mr Putin’s statement came hours after Mr Snowden asked for political asylum, according to a consular official at the Moscow airport where the leaker has been caught in legal limbo for more than a week.
US president Barack Obama said there have been high-level discussions between the US and Russia about Mr Snowden’s expulsion, though Mr Putin repeated that Russia will not send him back to the United States.
Mr Putin’s stance could reflect a reluctance to shelter Mr Snowden, which would hurt already strained US-Russian ties.
At the same time, the Russian leader seemed to keep the door open to allowing him to stay, a move that would follow years of anti-American rhetoric popular with Mr Putin’s core support base of industrial workers and state employees. Mr Putin said at a news conference: “If he wants to go somewhere and there are those who would take him, he is welcome to do so. If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: he must stop his activities aimed at inflicting damage on our American partners, no matter how strange it may sound coming from my lips.”
Mr Snowden has been stuck in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport since his arrival from Hong Kong on Jun 23. The US has annulled his passport, and Ecuador, where he hoped to get asylum, has been coy about taking him.
Kim Shevchenko, duty officer at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s consular office in the airport reportedly said that Mr Snowden’s representative, Sarah Harrison, handed over his request for asylum late yesterday.
Mr Putin insisted that Mr Snowden is not a Russian agent and that Russian security agencies have not contacted him.
Mr Snowden does not want to stop his efforts to reveal information about the US surveillance programme, probably because he considers himself a rights activist and a “new dissident,” Mr Putin said.
The US has appeared to back off from tough public words as it tries to broker Mr Snowden’s return, in part to avoid increasing tensions as Mr Obama looks for Russia’s cooperation in finding a path to peace in Syria.
Mr Putin’s comments come as Mr Obama’s administration is facing a breakdown in confidence of key allies over secret programmes that reportedly installed covert listening devices in EU offices.
Europe’s outrage was triggered by a report by German news weekly Der Spiegel that the National Security Agency (NSA) bugged diplomats from friendly nations, such as EU offices in Washington, New York and Brussels.
The report was partly based on the series of revelations of US eavesdropping leaked by Snowden.
French president Francois Hollande demanded the US immediately stop the alleged eavesdropping and suggested the surveillance scandal could derail negotiations for a free-trade deal potentially worth billions of euro.
The German government launched a review of its secure communications network and the EU’s executive, the European Commission, ordered “a comprehensive ad hoc security sweep”.
Italy has largely downplayed earlier reports of Mr Snowden’s revelations, even that the US had spied on G-20 members, in part because Italians are so used to being listened in on by their own government.
France is far less eager for a deal than Germany and Mr Hollande could face pressure from his allies on the left. The country’s ecology party said Mr Snowden should be given political asylum in France.
