As Edward Snowden enters his eighth straight day at the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, a strange international play is unfolding. Snowden, the former Booz Allen Hamilton employee who leaked revelations about the United States’ electronic surveillance program, has formally applied for political asylum in Russia, according to a Russian immigration official. [UPDATE: Snowden reportedly has withdrawn his asylum request.]
The Russian official noted that Snowden has appealed to 15 different nations for asylum after Ecuador dismissed any promises of protections.
“It was a desperate measure on his part after Ecuador disavowed his political protection credentials,” said the official, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. “In the document Snowden reiterated once again that he is not a traitor and explained his actions only by a desire to open the world’s eyes on the flagrant violations by U.S. special services not only of American citizens but also citizens of European Union including their NATO allies.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated that the call for asylum may be honored if Snowden stops his campaign against the United States.
“There is one condition if he wants to remain here: he must stop his work aimed at damaging our American partners. As odd as it may sound from me,” Putin told a media conference in Moscow.
Putin concedes that Snowden considers himself “a fighter of human rights” and would be unwilling to accept Putin’s terms.
Putin, however, made it clear that Russia will not yield to any extradition requests.
“Russia has never extradited anyone and is not going to do so. Same as no one has ever been extradited to Russia,” Putin stated, according to Russia Today.
“At best,” he noted, Russia exchanged its foreign intelligence employees detained abroad for “those who were detained, arrested and sentenced by a court in the Russian Federation,” according to Russia Today.
Putin has recognized Snowden as not being a Russian agent.
“Mr. Snowden is a free man, and the sooner he chooses his final destination the better it is for us and for him,” Putin said last week. “I hope it will not affect the business-like character of our relations with the U.S. and I hope that our partners will understand that.”
A man without a country
Last week, the U.S. State Department annulled Snowden’s passport, leaving the whistleblower with no valid documents to travel internationally. Snowden’s passport was officially annulled in Hong Kong, and Snowden entered Russia illegally.
“Such a revocation does not affect citizenship status. Persons wanted on felony charges, such as Mr. Snowden, should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel other than is necessary to return him to the United States,” State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said in a statement.
“We don’t have an extradition treaty with Russia,” President Obama told reporters while on a visit to Tanzania. “On the other hand, Mr. Snowden, we understand, has traveled there without a valid passport and legal papers. And we are hopeful the Russian government makes decisions based on the normal procedures regarding international travel and the normal interactions law enforcement have.”
The lack of a valid passport has effectively ended Snowden’s plans to seek asylum in Ecuador.
“He doesn’t have a passport. I don’t know the Russian laws, I don’t know if he can leave the airport, but I understand that he can’t,” Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa told The Associated Press. “At this moment he’s under the care of the Russian authorities.”
Correa has indicated that the Ecuadorean consul in London committed “a serious error” by issuing the letter of safe passage for Snowden and that the consul will be punished. The Ecuadorean documents have been revoked.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has worked to help Snowden, acknowledged that Snowden is in diplomatic limbo “for the moment.” However, Assange has indicated that the flow of intelligence leaks to the media will not be stopped.
“There is no stopping the publishing process at this stage,” he said.
Diplomatic headaches and frosty foreign relations
Meanwhile, on “Fox News Sunday,” Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have made issue of Russia’s refusal to turn over Snowden, as well as the country’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“We should deal realistically, not a return of the Cold War, but realistically with Vladimir Putin,” McCain said. “I think we pushed the reset back down to about 1955. We have to deal realistically with an autocratic ruler in Russia.”
“They thumb our nose at us no matter what the issue,” McCain said of suggestions that Russia is intentionally instigating America.
“They should pay a price,” Schumer echoed. “They’re always are putting their finger in our eye.”
In realistic terms, neither China nor Russia could turn Snowden over to the United States. Doing so would destroy the nations’ international reputations. At this point in history, Snowden is largely seen as a hero for revealing the United States’ spying efforts. Officials in the European Union are livid about recent allegations that the National Security Agency bugged EU offices and gained access to its internal computer networks, and they are demanding answers from the United States.
The allegations, revealed in a report by Germany’s Der Spiegel, states that the NSA bugged the EU offices in Washington, Brussels and at the United Nations complex in New York City. Der Spiegel claimed that the NSA monitored about 20 million German phone connections and 10 million Internet data sets per day on average, with the rate rising to 60 million phone connections on busy days. The magazine also reported that the U.S. monitors about 2 million data connections per day in France.
According to a 2010 NSA document, only the U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand are exempt from U.S. surveillance. Germany has called such surveillance — if found to be true — “unacceptable” and feels that this violation of trust would chill EU-U.S. relations. It may even kill future transnational negotiations, such as the trans-Atlantic free trade agreement. Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the German justice minister, accused Washington of using “Cold War” methods against its allies, saying it is “beyond comprehension that our friends in the U.S. see Europeans as enemies.”
Since Putin returned to the presidency last year, he has squared off against the U.S. on allegations of human rights violations in Russia — going as far as to stop all adoptions of Russian children by Americans. Last year, the Kremlin ordered the closing of the Russian office of the U.S. Agency for International Development. It also recently offered Assange, who is wanted by the American government for theft and illegal dissemination of controlled documents, his own talk show on state-ran Russia Today.
However, many feel that it is not prudent, in light of the circumstances, to consider how this refusal to extradite Snowden will affect U.S.-Russian relations, since the two nations’ relationship is not dynamic enough to respond to such an incident.
“There’s no sentimentality on the Russian side — the small group of self-interested people who run Russia care about power, money and exercising influence, and they are willing to do a lot to advance their perceived interests: send arms to Syria, shut down human rights NGO’s and bear their leaders, arrest potential political opponents, invade a small neighbouring country, shut off energy supplies to other neighbours, etc,” said Kurt Volker, executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership and former U.S. ambassador to NATO.