NYT :Edward Snowden, in Russia Since 2013, Is Granted Permanent Residency

October 31, 2020

Edward Snowden, in Russia Since 2013, Is Granted Permanent Residency

The former intelligence contractor still hopes to return to the United States. But the Russian authorities have given him the right to stay in Russia indefinitely.

 
 
Edward J. Snowden speaking via video link at a conference in Berlin last year. Recent changes to Russian law helped him win permanent residency.
Credit…Jorg Carstensen/DPA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
 
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  • MOSCOW — Edward J. Snowden, the former American intelligence contractor whose 2013 leaks of top-secret documents set off a worldwide debate about government surveillance, is now a permanent resident of Russia.

Mr. Snowden, 37, has been living in exile in Moscow since 2013, when he fled to the Russian capital after giving journalists access to a trove of National Security Agency documents detailing the American intelligence service’s mass surveillance programs. On Thursday, the country’s immigration authorities granted Mr. Snowden permanent residency, his lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, wrote on Facebook.

Anton Troianovski has been a Moscow correspondent for The New York Times since September 2019. He was previously Moscow bureau chief of The Washington Post and spent nine years with The Wall Street Journal in Berlin and New York.