MOSCOW—When National Security Agency leaker
Edward Snowden touched down here from Hong Kong, Russia appeared to be handed an easy opportunity to taunt the U.S. without causing a massive diplomatic rupture. Instead, Moscow may have a bigger problem on its hands.
"Why did he have to fly here?" Vladimir Lukin, the Kremlin's human-rights envoy, told the Interfax news agency Friday. "In effect, China's problem became our problem. Someone has created a situation that means we are the ones who have to deal with this…. Here I see a serious problem."
Snowden on the Run
U.S. authorities sought to catch Edward Snowden before he reached his next goal: political asylum in Ecuador.
Mr. Lukin's comments came amid an increasingly pitched discussion in Russia over what to do with Mr. Snowden, the American whose high-stakes Moscow layover entered a sixth day Friday with no end in sight.
Russian President
Vladimir Putin denied a U.S. request to expel the 30-year-old fugitive from Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport this week, calling him a free man and saying the sooner he chose a final destination, "the better it will be for us and him."
The comments made clear the Kremlin's approach: Russia wouldn't stop Mr. Snowden from escaping U.S. authorities but didn't want him to stay. The U.S., however, curtailed Mr. Snowden's options after he left Hong Kong, revoking his passport and pressuring intermediary countries on his path to Ecuador, the Andean nation that is considering his application for political asylum.
Both Mr. Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have emphasized that Mr. Snowden technically hasn't crossed the Russian border because he remains in the airport's transit zone. Otherwise, Russia would need to issue him a visa, raising the level of its cooperation in the affair.
Ecuador's Foreign Minister confirmed Friday that his government has held discussions with Russia about how Mr. Snowden could leave the airport. "There are some conversations that we've had in the last few days" with Russia about how Mr. Snowden could leave the country, said Ricardo Patiño , declining to give further details about Mr. Snowden's situation.
Also Friday, the former security contractor's father acknowledged that his son broke the law, NBC News reported Friday. "If folks want to classify him as a traitor, in fact, he has betrayed his government. But I don't believe that he's betrayed the people of the United States," Lonnie Snowden told NBC.
The father also said he believes his son would consider returning to the U.S. under certain conditions, including if the Justice Department promises not to hold him before trial and not subject him to a gag order, according to NBC.
Such a prospect would give the Kremlin a measure of hope that its "hands-off" approach could still succeed.
"We shouldn't hinder Snowden from doing what he wants," even going to the U.S., Chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the Russian Duma Alexei Pushkov said. He noted that the large part of Russians view Mr. Snowden sympathetically.
Mr. Pushkov attributed Mr. Snowden's ideas to the "liberal Hollywood culture" seen in movies such as "Enemy of the State" and "Three Days of the Condor," where "a hero is the person who overcomes the challenges of secret, anti-democratic powers."
"For Snowden, it could end badly," Mr. Pushkov said. "Because all these films have a happy ending. In life, I don't think a happy ending will come to pass."
Both Russia and the U.S. have said they don't want to let Mr. Snowden sabotage joint efforts to improve diplomatic relations after a year and a half of mutual hostility. With President
Barack Obamaruling out any swap—the long-standing U.S.-Russian solution to such cases—and suggesting he won't be calling Mr. Putin to address the situation, Mr. Snowden may remain in Russia for a long time.
Some Russian public figures allied with the Kremlin have started building a case for granting asylum to Mr. Snowden, who is wanted by U.S. authorities for exposing domestic surveillance operations. Some such campaigns by loyalists have in the past been used to test the waters for later Kremlin initiatives.
Russia's main state-owned TV channel devoted an hour-long talk show to Mr. Snowden late Thursday in which nationalist commentator Alexander Prokhanov praised him as a soldier on the side of Russia and a "weapon of the counter-strike." One guest compared Mr. Snowden to Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet nuclear physicist and dissident. Another said he was a symbol of the beginning of the end for the U.S.
Vyacheslav Nikonov, a political scientist and grandson of Stalinist foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, told viewers it would be a double standard to expel Mr. Snowden. "There's never been a single case where people who betrayed Russia were handed over by the United States or any other Western country," he said.
It isn't clear whether Mr. Snowden would want to request asylum from Russia. A spokesman for WikiLeaks, which has said it is assisting Mr. Snowden in his asylum bid, said this week that Mr. Snowden is focused on Ecuador.
Any request for asylum here "will be a big problem for Russia," said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in chief of Russia in Global Affairs, a foreign-relations journal. "To not give it to him, in this situation, would be indecent, and to give it to him would once again create a constant problem in relations with the U.S."
The Kremlin may be left with little option, though. Dmitri Trenin, Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said it would play poorly domestically if Mr. Putin were to forsake Mr. Snowden at this point. He said: "The more nationalist constituencies in Russia would not welcome Putin changing his mind on this guy."
—Mercedes Alvaro in Quito, Ecuador, contributed to this article.
