Who would have dreamed, back in the 1980s, that patriotic American dissidents would be fleeing to Moscow in pursuit of safety:
Putin said Russia ruled out handing Snowden over to the United
States. Putin said that Snowden was “not a Russian agent” and that
Russian intelligence services weren’t working with him, according to
Reuters. He said that Snowden should choose his final destination
and travel there, but also offered some compliments to the National
Security Agency leaker. Putin said he considered Snowden to be a
rights activist, calling him a “new dissident,” according to The
Associated Press, and compared him to Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei
Sakharov.
Putin makes it possible for our generation to understand how historical strongmen became popular in their day. In the meantime, he’s certainly winning the world’s favor by protecting the man who revealed just how pernicious the US empire has become.