[phatfish]

I'll be charitable by assuming that people here are getting defensive by their hero not living up to expectations. Snowden is (justifiably) angry about the US treatment of him and happily amplifies Russian propaganda as some sort of badly considered revenge.

It's a shame that he uses his platform for this, especially as the current propaganda is in support of Russia rolling their tanks across the border and killing thousands of people in Ukraine.

[InSteady]

Also worth noting that it is strongly in his interest to craft and filter his public dialogue with the interests of the Russian state in mind. It is a basic fact of his existence, whether it is something he thinks about explicitly and often or not. Of course Russia isn't going to execute him or throw in in a gulag, since he is more valuable to them as a political set-piece that somewhat undermines America's moral high ground. However, that doesn't mean they can't lean on him considerably and make his life severely unpleasant in myriad subtle ways. There is no way he isn't acutely aware of Russia's reputation for brutal coercive tactics regarding their political enemies and targets, especially domestic ones.

He is completely at their mercy and he knows it. What is he going to do, cry out to the world that Russia is hounding and harassing him, or otherwise making his already beleaguered situation even less tenable? First of all, who is going to care that can do anything about it, second, it will delight people he almost certainly views as his enemy for him to make any such pleas and thirdly, it starts down a path of no return to start calling out Russia for abuses while you are stuck there with no allies and no way out.

Being on reasonably amicable terms with the power-elite in Russia is pretty much the last, best hope he has in this world. Whether consciously or not, the severe ramifications of burning that bridge are going to weigh on every decision and proclamation he makes. Of course he may always consider this effect and choose actions that upset Russia/Putin without regard for personal consequences. But it becomes increasingly easy to justify the path that doesn't lead to the complete crushing of your spirit the longer you have lived your life staring down the barrel of 5 or 10 different shotguns trained right between your eyes.

And of course it gets easier still when you feel wronged and martyred by the enemy of your friend, even if that friend is born purely out of necessity and circumstance. Anyway, all that is to say, thought I am grateful for his attempt to protect American citizens' constitutional rights and hold the government that professes to fight always for freedom to a higher standard... I have to take anything he has said in recent years as extremely biased and a product of "soft" but very serious coercion (from multiple fronts).