Edward Snowden granted Russian citizenship; what led ex-US security contractor to Moscow?

One of the 75 foreign nationals listed by the decree signed by Vladimir Putin as being granted Russian citizenship is Edward Snowden. Snowden, a former contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, has been living in Russia since 2013 and was granted permanent residency in 2020. At that time, he had revealed his plan to apply for Russian citizenship, without renouncing his U.S. citizenship. But what brought Snowden to Russia from the U.S.? 

But what brought Snowden to Russia from the US? 

After growing up in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and then, later moving to Maryland, Snowden studied computing at a community college. However, he never finished the course. He joined the U.S. Army and began training with the special forces, only to break his legs and get discharged. He joined NSA and then the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 2007, he was given a CIA post with diplomatic cover in Geneva, which he gave up on, in 2009. He re-joined NSA, this, time as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen Hamilton, for 'access to classified information to gather evidence'.

In May 2013, Snowden quit his job and flew to Hong Kong, and the very next month, i.e., in June, he leaked thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists. The Guardian in Britain published the first story based on his revelations. It revealed that a secret court order was allowing the U.S. government to get Verizon to share the phone records of millions of Americans. 

Thereafter, articles were published in The Washington Post and other leading dailies, but it is believed that there are 'thousand upon thousand' documents that the journalists have chosen not to publish because they would have harmed people's reputation or privacy rights because they would expose 'legitimate surveillance programme'. 

In June itself, the U.S. filed a criminal complaint. He was charged with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defence information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person, as per the complaint. The latter two offences fall under the U.S. Espionage Act and carry penalties of fines and up to 10 years in prison.

After the U.S. framed charges and asked local authorities to extradite him, Snowden left Hong Kong, initially for Moscow, but with the intention of seeking asylum in Ecuador. However, Ecuador has said it could not consider his asylum request until he had arrived in the Latin American country, or one of its diplomatic missions.

He took a flight straight to Moscow, where he stayed in a transit zone in Sheremetyevo airport for more than a month until he was given permission to enter Russia with the offer of an asylum there for one year. Thereafter, in 2014, he was given a three-year residency permit.

In September 2019, Snowden wrote 'Permanent Record: A Memoir of a Reluctant Whistleblower'. Still facing espionage charges, he was slapped with a lawsuit for violation of the non-disclosure agreements he signed with both the CIA and NSA. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia entered a final judgment and permanent injunction against Snowden in 2020. 

Amid all this, he applied to renew his temporary permit, when Russia granted him unlimited permanent residence, much to the dismay of the U.S., which was making efforts to extradite him. 

(With agency inputs)