Perhaps you weren't alive or old enough to pay attention back when Russia ballet dancers/athletes/et. al. would come to the U. S. for the Russian Nutcracker Ballet tour, then ask for asylum. Or maybe your country-that-is-not-the-US didn't make a big deal of it, but it would be all over the news about how some ballet performer seeks asylum from The Evil Empire(tm). Of course the person would seek asylum in the U. S., The World's Choice for Freedom(R).

And now Russia has a chance to turn those tables on the U. S.? I'm kind of disappointed that it took them this long to execute the obvious play.

It’s an easy PR win. The US behaves like a petulant child, and Russia can come off like the benevolent country protecting freedom. That seems like an extremely easy decision to make.

Never thought I'd need to lecture HN about Occam's Razor: Permanent residency is a status for foreign citizens, who have been residing in the country permanently i.e. living there for a long time (e.g. 7 years) and might stay indefinitely. Rather than applying for a visa renewal every year, it saves time and money to grant those people a permanent residency.

It costs them nothing, yeah just PR.

I doubt there's anything they 'get' from permanent residency vs not. Beyond PR, I doubt they've been waiting to get whatever they want from him up until today ;)

Whatever discussions with him they wanted to have likely concluded LONG ago.

I know almost no one on HN wants to hear anything bad about Snowden, but Greenwald has stated that Snowden has leaked some information out of self preservation. We can't rule out the fact that Snowden has given information to the Russian government.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150704033557/https://twitter.c...

By granting Snowden asylum, Russia paints the USA as anti-free speech and pro-surveillance.

By giving asylum to near #1 target of US establishment they can prove to all kind of corrupt politicians, dictators (or just plain military criminals and terrorists) who serve Russia interests that they able to protect them from US too.

Presumably it applies a floor on what your life will be like if you whistleblow (or betray, depending on views) against the US, thereby encouraging more such actions.

Just part of normal spycraft then.

The more unfaltering facts uncovered about US the better for Russia. They also like to point to US to justify actions within the country: COPM is justified by NSA surveillance. They see Snowden as their guy and protect him.

It basically costs them nothing. It is a thumb in the eye of supposed freedom of the press/whistleblowers protected/good guys mythos of the USA. Here we have the supposed "bad guys, enemy of Team USA" housing a citizen and giving him sanctuary because all he tried to do was let the truth be known about unConstitutional activities and violations of the TLA government departments.

Russia has everything to gain from a divided us, because a divided us is less capable of opposing Russia. Classic divide and conquer.

that kind of trolling is called diplomacy. US will refrain from talking officially in international venues about freedom of speech in russia, for fear of being embarassed by this story.

Yes

They are signalling that they are willing to protect future leakers of embarrassing information.

What do they get out of protecting political dissidents from unfair persecution in their home country? I don't know, why not ask America from the 1900's?

Snowden is "Exhibit A" for how the US is hypocritical about opposition to surveillance states. Any time the US wants to try to shame Russia at the UN Security Council, Putin can just put a picture of their newest Moscovite up on the projector.

I'd think this isn't just a PR move, but his technical knowledge would probably be an asset to Russia, or any country for that matter. He'd be the perfect candidate to create a thriving startup, increase Russia's GDP, and create thousands of jobs. Or assist Russia's government in identifying threats from foreign cyber-spying.

What country wouldn't want highly skilled and knowledgeable people in STEM to immigrate, thrive, and boost the country's economy? Oh right, the US.