No Change: Russia Won't Extradite Snowden to US

Guess this is the response to Congress wanting to sanction countries that aid Snowden,
No Change: Russia Won't Extradite Snowden

A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin says Russia has not budged from its refusal to extradite U.S. leaker Edward Snowden, who has applied for asylum. Snowden, who is believed to have been staying at the Moscow airport transit zone since June 23, applied for temporary asylum in Russia last week.
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If history has shown us one thing, You cant bully the Russian bear.

Asked by a reporter whether the government's position had changed, Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies that "Russia has never extradited anyone and never will."

Its my stance that the further the US goes to get what many (myself included) consider a damn hero, the more foolish it looks.

Snowden is standing up for all our rights violation, he has lost everything.

Its time we all see who the real bad guys are in the world.

reply to post by benrl


Let' hope they don't. From the news reports I read this morning, it looks like the US is making promises to Russia. Like they won't execute him and things like that. I hope this is not a response to preconditions the Russians might have asked for. That could be bad for Snowden.

Mr Snowden does not have much value to Russia.

So the Russian government stance is more symbolic than anything else.

Mr Snowden should come back to US as his objectives are political. The American people should defend Mr Snowden.

Originally posted by GargIndia
Mr Snowden does not have much value to Russia.

So the Russian government stance is more symbolic than anything else.

Mr Snowden should come back to US as his objectives are political. The American people should defend Mr Snowden.

Russia has good reason to treat Snowden well. It's just good practice to treat whistleblowers, military defectors, and enemy combatants that come to your side well, as it encourages more to come in the future. It also makes the country look great internationally. So long as Snowden doesn't break any Russian laws, they have every reason to treat him well.

reply to post by Aazadan


Not sure about the value of information that Mr Snowden has.

Russia has close to a trillion dollars locked up in Western financial system. Where do you think all this money is going to, that disappears from Russia.

I am not sure how much Putin can do.

I have a feeling that Mr Snowden will return to US. This may happen mysteriously and quietly though.

The information given by Mr Snowden has great relevance to American people, who have a right to question their government about universal surveillance.

It is a fact that every bit of information that government has on you will be used or misused. This will be used to put down dissidents and opposing political beliefs.

if i was to tell you that ed. snowden is a computer generated virtual
animation creation, would it be too soon?

take another look at any of the video and see how many glitches
you can count. go ahead, you can use your two hands.
research the bio. of the lady to first 'interview' him. oops! but a little too
obvious, no? is 'she' herself for 'real'?

anyone up to the challange of grasping the truth, in all it's generated glory?

everybody now, blurring it up:
and it really, really, really did happen.
and it really, really, really did happen.

reply to post by GargIndia


In a real democracy that would be realistic . Unfortunately we talking about the usa they will not allowed that and will do everything in their power to sabotage it. There is a better chance he will end up in Guantanamo or somewhere else or his plane will "crash" or he will die of "natural" causes or something. Nothing is impossible with a terrorist regime.

I think Russia will hold onto him.
The US government really should think about the consequences if they were to bring him back to the US and sentence him (Guantanamo or something like that). A lot of the people would be furious, all he did was bring to light about how our own government was exploiting our personal times and surveying us, he did what any man with morals would have done.

Russia will NOT hand Snowden over, well not until he has divulged all the information that he holds on the US Government anyways. Meanwhile Russia is also playing the US Government for all that it can get. All the time Snowden is playing a game of piggy in the middle with his fate being decided by others in this game.

If you think the era of the KGB is gone then think again, Putin himself was head of KGB and Snowden is not just sitting around at the airport drinking coffee, you can bet there are KGB staff with him 24/7 getting as much info out of him as possible.

Meanwhile the rest of the world plays a waiting game to see what happens in this scenario. Russia would never pass up an opportunity to play an ace card against the US.

reply to post by Anevyn

I think the cold war is over. We are in a new era, but having said that, the relationship between Russia and the United States will always be "formal".

I agree that Russia is, quite rightly, milking the Snowden situation for all its considerable worth.

Snowden is like a modern "Eichmann" type, but with a difference. He is not going along with the Nazi program. There have been others, lesser known, who have done the same but have paid for it stateside. Snowden bugged out instead.

Of course, this whole situation is a can of worms. The US government can bring Snowden back and put him in jail on valid national security grounds in which a court case, quite legitimately, would never consider the wider implications of national policy that he is trying to expose to the American public.

As Sibel Edmunds has said, there is no real effective framework in the United States to handle the activities of whistleblowers. She formed a group to assist them, in fact. One wonders why Snowden did not make use of their good offices.

In that context, there are a lot of reservations about Snowden.

What I wanted to get at in this post though, is that if Snowden stays in Russia, then he becomes Putin's problem.

Russia is no bastion of free speech. Russia can match America any time, dead journalist for dead journalist. They will never showcase Snowden. They cannot. He's like a disease to a big surveillance state. The issues that he presents have to be resolved democratically at a more fundamental level than is possible to do for the present leadership both in the US and Russia.

I can't really see Snowden staying in Russia for any length of time. I think the Russians will eventually get him out of the country.

On a conspiracy level, if the FSB has interrogated him in any comprehensive way regarding important security deployments in the US, he may be in a position to elucidate Russian concerns to his former employers if he is ever back in the US. It raises the question of whether Snowden is a Lee Harvey Oswald style fake defector.

Knowledge of Russia's security concerns vis a vis American electronic surveillance capabilities puts Snowden in a very dangerous position, personally.

The Snowden drama is fascinating. Handling him is like handling flypaper for any government. One becomes wedded to the issues raised by him. I don't think Putin is interested in being restricted in that way.

I think Russia is trying to develop a way to get along in the world that is more democratic but that doesn't involve all of the chicanery of a "democracy" like the United States, a brutal oligarchical wolf in democratic sheep's clothing.

Democracy is a new toy for them. They are being cautious with it. They have already had to deal with one set of oligarchs, the home grown ones. They don`t want to open the door wide to the machinations of the American oligarchs. I`m sure some among them may be wondering if that is what they have already done with Snowden.

Good for Russia/Snowden! I was thinking about this the last few days, now that the corrupt ways of the NSA/whitehouse have been leaked, is this spying going to stop? Is it back to how it was and the American people just forgot that we no longer have any right or privacy? I want to say it was pretty clear the American people were not okay with this, nor our allies.