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Putin Says Snowden Must Stop Hurting U.S. to Stay in Russia Snowden Seeks Asylum in Russia, Putting Kremlin on the Spot
(about 7 hours later)
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin said on Monday that Edward J. Snowden, the former national security staffer accused of espionage, would not receive political asylum in Russia unless he stopped publishing classified documents that hurt the interests of the United States. MOSCOW — The Kremlin found itself confronted with a dilemma it had hoped to avoid on Monday, after an official revealed that Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor wanted by the United States, had submitted a request to Russia for political asylum.
At a news conference here, Mr. Putin said that since it appeared Mr. Snowden was going to continue publishing leaks, his chances of staying in Russia were slim. Mr. Putin also pushed back against efforts by the United States to persuade the Russian government to extradite Mr. Snowden, making it clear that Russia would not comply. Kim N. Shevchenko, the consul at Sheremetyevo airport, said that Mr. Snowden’s traveling companion hand-delivered Mr. Snowden’s request late Sunday evening to a Russian consulate in Terminal F of the airport, and that it had been passed to the country’s Foreign Ministry.
“Russia never gives up anyone to anybody and is not planning to,” Mr. Putin said. No high-level officials confirmed the report on Monday. President Vladimir V. Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri S. Peskov, said he did not know whether the request had been submitted. “I do not have any information,” he said.
Mr. Snowden applied for political asylum in Russia late on Sunday night, according to Kim Shevchenko, an official at the Russian consulate at Sheremetyevo Airport here. Mr. Shevchenko said Sarah Harrison, a WikiLeaks activist who is traveling with Mr. Snowden, hand-delivered his request to the consulate in Terminal F of the airport. Mr. Putin has tried to stake out a neutral position since Mr. Snowden landed at Sheremetyevo airport eight days ago. If he grants Mr. Snowden asylum, Mr. Putin will inflict severe damage on Russia’s relationship with the United States. If he plays a part in his capture, he will appear to have bent to Washington’s will.
Eight days ago, Mr. Snowden arrived on an Aeroflot flight from Hong Kong, apparently intending to board a connecting flight to Latin America. Since then, Mr. Snowden and Ms. Harrison have become caught in a geopolitical limbo, since Mr. Snowden’s American passport has been revoked and he has been unable to leave the transit zone. At a news conference on Monday, Mr. Putin tried to thread the needle, saying Mr. Snowden was welcome to stay in Russia as long as he stopped publishing classified documents that hurt the United States’ interests. He went on to acknowledge that this was unlikely to happen.
With Ecuador, his original destination, evidently wavering, Mr. Snowden’s options seem to have narrowed, and his stopover at Sheremetyevo Airport now threatens to stretch into weeks. Mr. Putin referred to this uncertainty on Monday. “If he wants to go somewhere and they accept him, please, be my guest,” Mr. Putin said. “If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: He must cease his work aimed at inflicting damage to our American partners, as strange as it may sound from my lips.”
“If he wants to go somewhere and they accept him, please, be my guest,” he said. “If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: He must cease his work aimed at inflicting damage to our American partners, as strange as it may sound from my lips.” He added, “Because he sees himself as a human-rights activist and a freedom fighter for people’s rights, apparently he is not intending to cease this work. So he must choose for himself a country to go to, and where to move. When that will happen, I unfortunately don’t know.”
But Mr. Putin also noted that Mr. Snowden seemed intent on continuing to publish classified documents that damage the United States. Mr. Putin’s comments reflected an increasingly sober view of the outcome if Mr. Snowden remains in Russia. For the second time, he took pains to say that Mr. Snowden had not been recruited by Russian intelligence — an impression that could corrode Mr. Snowden’s image as a truth-teller and drive away some supporters.
“Because he sees himself as a human rights activist and a freedom fighter for people’s rights, apparently he is not intending to cease this work,” Mr. Putin said. “So he must choose for himself a country to go to and where to move. When that will happen, I unfortunately don’t know.” “He sees himself not as a former agent of a special service but as a fighter for human rights, a sort of a new dissident, someone similar to Sakharov, on a different scale, though,” Mr. Putin said. “But nevertheless, at his core he is a fighter for human rights, for democracy.” The reference was to the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.
A Foreign Ministry official told The Los Angeles Times on Monday that Mr. Snowden had appealed to 15 countries for political asylum, handing over the paperwork at a Monday morning meeting at the airport. The official characterized the applications as “a desperate measure” on Mr. Snowden’s part, after Ecuadorean officials said that the Ecuadorean travel document he is using was invalid. Eight days ago, Mr. Snowden arrived on an Aeroflot flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, apparently intending to board a connecting flight headed for Latin America. After that, however, the United States announced that his American passport had been revoked, leaving him in a geopolitical limbo, stripped of any valid identification and unable to leave Sheremetyevo’s transit zone.
Mr. Shevchenko said that Mr. Snowden’s application for political asylum in Russia had not received a response from the Foreign Ministry as of Monday evening. While Mr. Snowden remains in this suspended state, the United States has engaged an array of countries that have considered granting him asylum, making clear that doing so would carry big costs. Ecuador, the country which is sheltering the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has distanced itself, with top officials saying that it could take as long as two months to process Mr. Snowden’s asylum request and that Russia bore most responsibility for his fate.
It usually takes a month for an application for political asylum to receive an answer from the Russian government, said Vladimir P. Lukin, Russia’s human rights commissioner, in an interview. Mr. Putin’s spokesman, meanwhile, said as recently as Sunday that Mr. Snowden’s case “was not one on the Kremlin’s agenda,” noting that Sheremetyevo’s transit zone is legally not the part of territory of the Russian Federation.
In mid-June, shortly after Mr. Snowden’s identity as the source of disclosures about the American government’s widespread collection of private Internet and telephone data, Mr. Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri S. Peskov, signaled openness to granting him political asylum, telling a reporter from Kommersant that “if we receive such a request, it will be considered.” “Snowden himself is in a pretty difficult situation,” said Dmitri V. Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “I think he was following Assange’s advice trying to get to Ecuador, but then Ecuador, and, indirectly, Cuba, have failed him. I think Venezuela is talking to the U.S. as well. The U.S. can offer things to Venezuela.”
But over the week that Mr. Snowden has spent at Sheremetyevo airport, top Russian officials have tried to remain neutral on whether he should be granted asylum, perhaps because they are wary of the damage it would do to their relationship with the United States. Top officials have said the case does not directly involve them, since Mr. Snowden has not passed through immigration control and remains in a part of the airport that is technically not Russian territory. Mr. Snowden’s application for asylum could make it difficult for the Kremlin to remain neutral, especially since the case has become a primary topic for public discussion in Russia over the last several days.
In a radio interview on Sunday, Mr. Peskov said Mr. Snowden’s fate was “not a theme on the Kremlin’s agenda.” A parade of public figures — including human rights activists, pro-Kremlin figures, Communists, nationalists and parliamentarians — have made statements in favor of granting him asylum. As anchors read reports on Mr. Snowden’s case on a popular news program Monday night, a vivid blue-and-red backdrop read “Betray Snowden — Betray Freedom” and showed President Obama wearing headphones, a visual reference to the surveillance programs Mr. Snowden has revealed.
A series of public figures in Russia have come out in recent days in favor of extending Mr. Snowden political asylum, and on Monday, the question was the subject of a round table at the Public Chamber, a Kremlin advisory body. “To be honest, I can’t see any problem there,” Ivan Melnikov, one of the leaders of Russia’s Communist Party, told Interfax. “If the problem is hysterics from the United States, they ought to remember that, historically speaking, granting political asylum to figures like Snowden is normal historical practice, and there’s no reason for Russia to be embarrassed and drop out.”
“I believe that we should not give him away in any case,” said Aleksandr Sidyakin, a prominent member of the majority United Russia Party. “It seems to me that Snowden is the greatest pacifist. This person has done no less to win the Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama.” At a round table on Monday, a prominent leader of United Russia, the main pro-Kremlin party, said Mr. Snowden “has done no less to win the Nobel Prize than Barack Obama.” Kirill Kabanov, a member of the presidential human rights council, described Mr. Snowden as a man who “tried to save the world.”
A spokeswoman for the White House said Monday that it had no reaction to Mr. Snowden’s asylum request and added that it did not change its position regarding Russia or Mr. Snowden. “Our message is the same to all countries about the need to expel him,” said Caitlin Hayden, the spokeswoman. Sergei A. Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst, said if Mr. Snowden received asylum, he could acquire a Russian transit document and leave the country, or else remain in the country as a public figure, which he said would be “very good for public relations, he will be like Gérard Depardieu.” Mr. Depardieu, the French actor, sought Russian citizenship to avoid taxes in his home country.
Asked if a decision by Russia to grant Mr. Snowden asylum would upset plans for Mr. Obama to visit in September, she called that “very hypothetical.” Mr., Markov said Russian leaders have spent several days weighing their options and taking a measure of domestic public opinion. The result, he said, was “more or less consensus over this issue.”
“As we’ve said, we do not want this to have a negative impact on the bilateral relationship, and we want to build on our good law enforcement cooperation, particularly since Boston,” Ms. Hayden said, referring to the Boston Marathon bombings. As an international oil and gas forum convened here Monday morning, analysts speculated that Mr. Putin and President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, would use the opportunity to negotiate terms for Mr. Snowden to leave the Russian airport.

Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington.

Russia enjoys warm ties with Venezuela, a major arms customer and energy partner, which sees the alliance as a way of countering the United States’ influence in Latin America.
The newspaper Izvestia even speculated that Mr. Maduro could spirit Mr. Snowden away on his presidential plane when he leaves Russia on Tuesday, arranging to take off from Sheremetyevo instead of a government facility at Vnukovo Airport. Mr. Putin responded blankly to that theory at Monday’s news conference.
“As to the possible departure of Mr. Snowden with some official delegation,” he said, “I know nothing.”