[philippejara]

Given his objective at the time was Ecuador, which lies across the sea from Russia, I find it very hard to believe he'd be crossing borders without taking at the very least a plane. And about seeking asylum, you are correct that a passport doesn't stop you from getting asylum, but when the official plane of a head of state is denied entry to the airspace of several European countries due to US suspicion that maybe snowden is on board[0], things become more complicated.

Trying to get himself smuggled out of russia is not realistic, and honestly kind of pointless at this point.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

[slg]

Isn't that incident evidence that the governments of the US, Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy all believed it was feasible that he could be smuggled out?

Also, the plane was only grounded because the flight plan took them through the airspace of US allies. If Snowden really was on the plane, they could have chosen a different route to avoid this issue. The US isn't going to shoot down a plane carrying a foreign head of state over international waters because they suspect a potential criminal is on board.