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Comment by seemslegit | Hacker News Reader

Snowden did not "defect to Russia", he got stuck in Russia while in transit after the US cancelled his passport.

And crucially, Snowden is as critical of Russia as possible, though not to the point of endangering himself. He doesn't want to be there. It's not where his allegiance ultimately lies.

That's not crucial at all, if he was a Russian asset he would have been behaving the same way - criticising Russia in ways that resonate with his audience to establish credibility but not in ways that actually pose any threat or embarrassment to Russia. But on the balance of publicly available evidence it seems far more likely he is stuck there due to lack of choice.

Seems like you and the parent are agreeing.

Maybe, but I think Snowden would have preferred to be pretty much anywhere else while Dammer was just too inexperienced to recognize that being popular in some circles is more of a liability than asset.

Your timeline is wrong. Snowden defected to Russia.

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-fable-of-edward-snowden...

That's an opinion article.

It has a timeline. His passport was suspended while he was in Hong Kong. He did not travel to Moscow on his US passport, he travelled to Moscow on some other travel document. He’s a defector.

I know this site is full of Snowden apologists, but for goodness sake you don’t have to swallow every easily disprovable lie he tells.

Depending on the mechanics of passport cancellation it could have been both, that is the US could have issued a cancelation order while he was still in HK but HK either did not act on it in time or refused to honor it like it did with Snowden's arrest warrant. The fact that Russia did honor the passport cancellation and did not issue him an alternative travel document is more suggestive but would have been the same if Russia just wanted to hang on to him for the simple reasons of being Russia.

No. Lol.

You’re on the run from the US because you committed espionage, and you fly to Russia?

That’s called defecting.

It's called defecting if you committed that espionage for Russia or cooperated with their intelligence while there, which while not entirely impossible is not very likely either.

No, that's not how it works.

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