Yeah because Snowden and Chelsea Manning are free US citizens...
People on HN are so full of propaganda and lies, it's shameful. Delete me, you're all empty slaves.
People on HN are so full of propaganda and lies, it's shameful. Delete me, you're all empty slaves.
That fear was well-founded, given what later happened to Bolivian president Evo Morales when the US suspected he might be transporting Snowden out of Russia[1], even though forcing planes to land to capture political prisoners is more fitting for a dictatorship than a democracy[2], but I suspect that Russia made it a condition of Snowden's safety that he not attempt to travel to any other country.
Of course I'm not saying I would have done anything differently were I in Snowden's position, but it is worth noting that he could in principle have avoided US and NATO airspace by travelling from Russia to Shenzhen to Johannesburg[3] to São Paulo[4] to Ecuador.
[0] https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/30/how_edward_snowden_av...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair_Flight_4978
[3] https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-szx-to-jnb
[4] https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-jnb-to-gru