Moscow has extended former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s residence permit by “a couple of years,” according to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
In a Facebook post referring to former CIA Director Michael Morell’s call via a column in The Cipher Brief for Moscow to extradite Snowden to the U.S. as an inauguration gift for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, Zakharova said it would do no such thing.
“This is not the first time the U.S. has made such very misanthropic pronouncements,” Zakharova wrote. Morell “does not know that Snowden has just had the term of his Russian residence permit extended by another couple of years.”
She added: “You still do not understand Russia, Michael Morell.”
Snowden has been in hiding in Moscow since 2013, when he gave the media classified documents that revealed the extent of NSA surveillance.