Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday granting Russian citizenship to the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.
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Snowden,a former US intelligence contractor, has been living in Russia since 2013 to escape prosecution in the US after leaking secret files
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Published by the Guardian, that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the US National Security Agency
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In 2020, Snowden said that he and his then-pregnant wife were applying for Russian citizenship in order not to be separated from their future son in an era of pandemics and closed borders
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Russia granted him permanent residency rights the same year, paving the way for him to obtain Russian citizenship
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Putin’s decree to grant Snowden citizenship quickly led to quips on social media that the whistleblower will soon be conscripted
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Will Snowden be mobilised?” wrote Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the state-owned broadcaster RT on her Telegram channel
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Snowden’s Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told the state news agency Ria Novosti that his client could not be drafted