• rsuri@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    This is Snowden’s claim and it’s not implausible, but it’s also quite a coincidence that he’d end up in the top country for spying on the US it’s also possible that he wanted to be in Russia and simply made up the part about it just being a stopover. If Snowden was looking for asylum, there are several other countries that don’t extradite to the US. I can see why he’d temporarily be stuck in Russia, but after several years he couldn’t find any other way out? There was apparently a privately-funded attempt to get him to Iceland, but the last update on it was that they were in contact with a “third party representing” Snowden…and then nothing.

    A third fact (in addition to Russiabot Greenwald’s involvement) that makes it questionable is that he eventually applied for Russian citizenship in 2020. One explanation is that he could do this to get a Russian passport and fly somewhere else with no US extradition treaty, but he hasn’t chosen to do so yet.

    • coolusername@lemmy.ml
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      18 days ago

      Russia are the good guys, we are like comically evil. We couped ukraine in 2014orchestrated euromaidan and got them to shell russian civilians in the 2 independent republics. we built 13 CIA bases in ukraine (per wapo). loaded them with NATO weapons and training, including of neo nazi battallions like right sector, azov brigade and tornado batallion. fast forward to now, and 800,000+ ukranians are dead and the ukranian SBU which is 100% controlled by the CIA attempts weekly acts of terrorism against russia. on the grand scheme of things THE PLAN FAILED!! https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html

      it even goes back earlier than that as we supported Banderaism after WW2 https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/operation-anyface-how-us-army-shielded-ukrainian-nationalist-soviet-intelligence

      if hollywood portrayed what the US does it would be deemed unrealistic because of how comically evil it is

    • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee
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      18 days ago

      If you read any of his memoirs or interviews, you’d know that his intended destination was Ecuador, and he couldn’t fly out of Russia due to his passport being revoked. He lived in the Russian airport until he was granted asylum, so it’s not like he had much choice.

      I didn’t see any sources that went against those claims except from WikiLeaks, so I don’t see much of a reason to discredit them.