Edward Snowden is increasingly unhappy with the situation in Russia, where he has lived for more than three years. President Vladimir Putin once welcomed the National Security Agency contractor for his propaganda value, but he may be wondering if it's all been worth it.
Snowden arrived in Moscow in June 2013. That was almost a year before the Crimea annexation, and Russia could still try to sell itself to radical leftists who admired Snowden as the lesser evil, compared with the Big Brother United States. Putin talked a lot about Snowden, showing obvious delight for thumbing his nose at the U.S., which had tried to intercept the whistleblower. He described Snowden as a "weird guy," an idealist, who was safe in Russia even though he had no secrets to pass on.
After Crimea, though, such statements started to appear hollow. "Russia is not the kind of country that hands over fighters for human rights," Putin said at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in May 2014. That the Russian president could talk about human rights after faking a secession referendum in Crimea would have been funny if it weren't so manipulative.