© REUTERS/ Bobby YipEdward Snowden: hot potato
by Anna Arutunyan at 28/06/2013 18:36
As NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden remains holed up somewhere in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, at least three governments are involved in high-stakes backdoor negotiations over his fate.
Politicians in the United States vowed to step up pressure on Russia and Ecuador. The latter has suggested it might give asylum to Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency wanted by the United States for leaking reports about a top-secret surveillance program. But for Ecuador and Russia, the key question was whether the whistleblower was a gift of fate or a hot potato.
By the end of this week, a number of Russian politicians were increasingly seeing him as an opportunity to exploit.
Russia’s Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, wants Snowden to help investigate whether American Internet companies provided information about Russian citizens to the U.S. government.
“We invite Edward Snowden to work with us and hope that as soon as he settles his legal status, he will collaborate with our working group and provide us with proof of U.S. intelligence agencies’ access to the servers of Internet companies,” Senator Ruslan Gattarov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying on Thursday, a day after Russia’s upper house of parliament decided to set up a special working group to investigate Snowden’s claims.
Earlier, Kirill Kabanov, a member of President Vladimir Putin’s Human Rights Council, called on colleagues to appeal to the Kremlin to grant asylum for Snowden.
Given that Putin himself suggested that giving Snowden asylum was as useless as “shearing a pig – a lot of squealing and no fleece,” why has Snowden suddenly become so appealing for Russia’s political elite?
“It’s very good to demonstrate to the world that the United States isn’t such a big defender of human rights as it makes itself out to be,” Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst and the prorector of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, told The Moscow News. “And it’s good to show that Russia can act independently of the United States. Plus, if he stays, there’s a possibility that our security services will have access to his information.”
Putin was notoriously lukewarm on Snowden, saying on Tuesday that the sooner he left the country, the better. But that, Markov said, was part personal, and part political ploy.
“[Putin] is a former intelligence officer, and for him [what Snowden did] is betrayal,” Markov said. “Also, Putin doesn’t want to think that Russia organized [Snowden’s arrival to Moscow].”
But other analysts reflected Putin’s skepticism, and said that keeping Snowden in Russia would be a mistake.
“It should not be done,” Alexander Konovalov, President of the Institute of Strategic Assessment, told The Moscow News, suggesting that Snowden posed a liability by being too unpredictable.
“No one really knows what he was motivated by. It wasn’t money. It wasn’t Communist ideals, which don’t matter anymore,” he said. “So what were they? He’s part of a new information society, and for many of these people, there is a conflict between the responsibilities they’ve undertaken before the state, and the responsibilities which they themselves feel they have before humanity. We will increasingly be seeing people like this here in Russia.”
That, Konovalov said, is not something the Kremlin would be looking forward to.
A similar indecisiveness on whether Snowden was worth the trouble was reflected in the United States, where President Barack Obama was lukewarm on pressing for Snowden’s extradition.
"I have not called [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] personally or President Putin personally and the reason is … number one, I shouldn't have to," Obama said this week, adding that given the business America does with Russia, Snowden just wasn’t worth “wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues.”
For some lawmakers, on the other hand, extraditing Snowden was a matter of political principle.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told The Daily Beast that the extradition was a “defining moment” in America’s relationship with Russia.
“We are exploring what are the leverage points. I’m trying to put together a package to let the Russians know how serious we are,” he was quoted as saying.
But even in the States, other lawmakers, like Carl Levin of the Senates Armed Services Committee, recognize they have little leverage over Russia.
Pressure by the United States on Ecuador – which too distanced itself from Snowden when it denied it had given him refugee documents of passage – has already backfired, for example.
After Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, threatened Ecuador’s trade arrangements with the United States if it grants asylum to Snowden, Ecuador thumbed its nose and renounced the preferential tariffs anyway, “in the face of threats, insolence and arrogance of certain U.S. sectors,” President Rafael Correa said on Thursday.
Indeed, both Ecuador and fellow leftist ally Venezuela seem to be in the middle – exploiting the political rhetoric, but not committing to Snowden himself. Both have made strong statements against the United States, but have largely remained careful in offering Snowden asylum.
Politicians in the United States vowed to step up pressure on Russia and Ecuador. The latter has suggested it might give asylum to Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency wanted by the United States for leaking reports about a top-secret surveillance program. But for Ecuador and Russia, the key question was whether the whistleblower was a gift of fate or a hot potato.
By the end of this week, a number of Russian politicians were increasingly seeing him as an opportunity to exploit.
Russia’s Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, wants Snowden to help investigate whether American Internet companies provided information about Russian citizens to the U.S. government.
“We invite Edward Snowden to work with us and hope that as soon as he settles his legal status, he will collaborate with our working group and provide us with proof of U.S. intelligence agencies’ access to the servers of Internet companies,” Senator Ruslan Gattarov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying on Thursday, a day after Russia’s upper house of parliament decided to set up a special working group to investigate Snowden’s claims.
Earlier, Kirill Kabanov, a member of President Vladimir Putin’s Human Rights Council, called on colleagues to appeal to the Kremlin to grant asylum for Snowden.
Given that Putin himself suggested that giving Snowden asylum was as useless as “shearing a pig – a lot of squealing and no fleece,” why has Snowden suddenly become so appealing for Russia’s political elite?
“It’s very good to demonstrate to the world that the United States isn’t such a big defender of human rights as it makes itself out to be,” Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst and the prorector of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, told The Moscow News. “And it’s good to show that Russia can act independently of the United States. Plus, if he stays, there’s a possibility that our security services will have access to his information.”
Putin was notoriously lukewarm on Snowden, saying on Tuesday that the sooner he left the country, the better. But that, Markov said, was part personal, and part political ploy.
“[Putin] is a former intelligence officer, and for him [what Snowden did] is betrayal,” Markov said. “Also, Putin doesn’t want to think that Russia organized [Snowden’s arrival to Moscow].”
But other analysts reflected Putin’s skepticism, and said that keeping Snowden in Russia would be a mistake.
“It should not be done,” Alexander Konovalov, President of the Institute of Strategic Assessment, told The Moscow News, suggesting that Snowden posed a liability by being too unpredictable.
“No one really knows what he was motivated by. It wasn’t money. It wasn’t Communist ideals, which don’t matter anymore,” he said. “So what were they? He’s part of a new information society, and for many of these people, there is a conflict between the responsibilities they’ve undertaken before the state, and the responsibilities which they themselves feel they have before humanity. We will increasingly be seeing people like this here in Russia.”
That, Konovalov said, is not something the Kremlin would be looking forward to.
A similar indecisiveness on whether Snowden was worth the trouble was reflected in the United States, where President Barack Obama was lukewarm on pressing for Snowden’s extradition.
"I have not called [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] personally or President Putin personally and the reason is … number one, I shouldn't have to," Obama said this week, adding that given the business America does with Russia, Snowden just wasn’t worth “wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues.”
For some lawmakers, on the other hand, extraditing Snowden was a matter of political principle.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told The Daily Beast that the extradition was a “defining moment” in America’s relationship with Russia.
“We are exploring what are the leverage points. I’m trying to put together a package to let the Russians know how serious we are,” he was quoted as saying.
But even in the States, other lawmakers, like Carl Levin of the Senates Armed Services Committee, recognize they have little leverage over Russia.
Pressure by the United States on Ecuador – which too distanced itself from Snowden when it denied it had given him refugee documents of passage – has already backfired, for example.
After Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, threatened Ecuador’s trade arrangements with the United States if it grants asylum to Snowden, Ecuador thumbed its nose and renounced the preferential tariffs anyway, “in the face of threats, insolence and arrogance of certain U.S. sectors,” President Rafael Correa said on Thursday.
Indeed, both Ecuador and fellow leftist ally Venezuela seem to be in the middle – exploiting the political rhetoric, but not committing to Snowden himself. Both have made strong statements against the United States, but have largely remained careful in offering Snowden asylum.
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