> Russian citizenship, which grants him additional protections from the United States

Protections he apparently didn’t need for nearly a decade, but did once Russia was executing its genocidal war. Your “he’s merely scared of America” narrative doesn’t hold water.

> trapped him in an adversarial foreign country

No one made him travel and his passport was revoked before flying to Moscow, evidence elsewhere on the thread. He trapped himself!

> timing makes for awkward optics, but I'm going to cut the guy some slack

Russia is systematically raping and murdering Ukrainians while Snowden is giving his oath to Russia and you call that “awkward optics?”