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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.

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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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