The Russian government has granted Russian citizenship to Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who exposed the massive spying programs of the US National Security Agency (NSA).

It was sung, although it is difficult to assess, whether the war in Ukraine, caused by Putin’s illegal invasion, had anything to do with the progress in granting citizenship. It should be said that as of 2020, Snowden had a permanent residence in Russia and previously received asylum on the basis of a temporary residence permit.

Thus ends a journey begun by a CIA consultant in 2013 when he fled the United States after the release of classified information that caused the biggest known privacy scandal.

Edward Snowden, hero or traitor?

Snowden is still being claimed in the United States espionage and theft of government property for releasing top-secret classified documents on various NSA programs, including PRISM mass surveillance, which involved access to the central servers of nine major US technology companies: Microsoft Corp, Yahoo Inc., Google Inc., Facebook Inc., PalTalk, AOL Inc., Skype , YouTube and Apple Inc.

Although a US federal court ruled that the communications spying program was carried out by the NSA it was unconstitutionaldescribed it as “almost Orwellian” and cited the horror that took place in the “father” of the US Constitution, James Madison, when he learned that the government was in this way to violate the freedom of citizensthe allegations against Snowden were confirmed.

And over time they grew. In 2016, the US Congress released a report that said Snowden had been in contact with Russian intelligence officials since arriving in the country, a claim the consultant denied. Putin, remember the former head of Russian espionage, said in 2017 that Snowden was wrong to leak American secrets, but he was not a traitor.

In fact, Edward Snowden said in a 2020 interview that he was willing to return to the United States if he was guaranteed a fair trial and a review of the charges, which in some states carried the death penalty.

Finally, with Russian citizenship in hand, the odyssey ends (if they don’t catch him outside of Russia…) He is a hero to manyfor sticking their necks out to expose the most nefarious (and illegal) mass surveillance programs known.