If his goal is to avoid U.S. prosecution and thoroughly annoy his former bosses, Edward Snowden couldn’t have chosen a better place to go than Moscow. Russia, still mired in wet dreams of Soviet-era world power, is always anxious to find a reason to mess with the United States. The Russians must have found a fleeing NSA contractor shouting about America’s invasive information gathering programs must have been funny enough. The fact that he showed up in their backyard was the icing on the cake.
The U.S. Asked Russia to return Snowden, and of course, Russian president (and virile vampire) Vladimir Putin smiled and said f*ck off.
Vladimir Putin
Well, he didn’t exactly say that, but the gist was there. Snowden’s not on Russian soil, Putin said (which is technically true, as he has not passed through customs, but I doubt that would stop the FSB if there was someone they wanted in the international terminal). As of Monday evening, however, Snowden was in violation of Russia law, which states that a traveler needs a valid transit visa after staying in the airport for over 24 hours. I’m not entirely sure how Russian law can apply in a place that, according to Putin, is not in Russia, but I’ll leave that to the fine minds of Russia’s legal apparatchiks.
We have no extradition treaty with the United States, Putin continued. Also true, but almost besides the point. If Russia was truly an ally of the United States it would work with us to obtain such a wanted fugitive. But we aren’t allies, despite the repeated, desperate-sounding attestations that we are. Putin has practically made a career out of baiting the U.S., particularly under the Obama administration. From day one Putin and his puppet Dmitry Medvedev went out of their ways to humiliate and belittle the United States at every turn.
The ill-fated (and ill-spelled) Russian Reset button was the beginning of the end. This shocking misstep was immediately identified as a sign of weakness by the hawkish Russian leadership. Of course, it wasn’t the misspelling that was the error (though it is a good sign of a person’s – or regime’s – mentality how they react to a well-meaning but mistaken use of language). The true flaw in this extraordinary bungle was the U.S. showing up at the Kremlin, hat in hand, apologizing when we had done nothing wrong. There was never any reason to reset relations with this budding autocracy, and even Putin knew it.
