Snowden Receives Russian Passport

MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/. Former NSA (National Security Agency) employee Edward Snowden took an oath and was granted a Russian passport, his lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told TASS on Friday.

"Yes, he received a passport. He took the oath," Kucherena said in a response to a question as to whether Snowden has been given a Russian passport, adding that he personally met with Snowden yesterday.

The lawyer also said that Snowden’s spouse is currently submitting the required documents for Russian citizenship as well. Snowden and American acrobat and blogger Lindsay Mills married in Moscow in 2017.

Snowden’s US passport was annulled in 2013, but the White House explained back then that it was a routine legal procedure following the issuance of an arrest warrant and his citizenship status remained unchanged.

In late September, a Russian presidential decree was published stating that Snowden was eligible to be granted the Russian citizenship.

In 2013, Snowden leaked information on the electronic surveillance methods used by American intelligence services, including illegally eavesdropping on foreign leaders’ conversations.

Fleeing punitive consequences from US federal authorities, Snowden sent requests for asylum to several countries, including Russia. On August 1, 2014, he obtained a temporary Russian residence permit and later was granted an open-ended residency permit.

Back in the United States, Snowden is facing two counts of violating the Espionage Act, and he risks up to ten years in prison on each count.  READ MORE...

NASA Astronauts

Russia's state-owned news service, TASS, has published an extraordinarily defamatory article about NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor. 

The publication claims that Auñón-Chancellor had an emotional breakdown in space, then damaged a Russian spacecraft in order to return early. This, of course, is a complete fabrication.

The context for the article is the recent, near-disastrous docking of the Russian Nauka science module with the International Space Station. 

The TASS article attempts to rebut criticism in US publications (including Ars Technica) that covered the incident and raised questions about the future of the Roscosmos-NASA partnership in space.

One of a dozen rebuttals in the TASS article concerns a 2018 incident—a 2 mm breach in the orbital module of the Soyuz MS-09 vehicle docked with the International Space Station. 

Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev, European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, and NASA's Auñón-Chancellor had flown to the station inside this Soyuz in June. The leak was discovered in late August.

Left unchecked, the small hole would have depressurized the station in about two weeks. Fortunately, cosmonauts were able to patch the hole with epoxy, and the Soyuz spacecraft was deemed safe to fly its crew of three back to Earth.

Attention quickly turned to what had caused the hole to appear. A micrometeoroid strike was ruled out. Some Russian media reported that it had been caused by a manufacturing or testing defect, and this seems to be the most plausible theory. 

At the same time, however, sources in the Russian government started baseless rumors that perhaps a disgruntled NASA astronaut had drilled the hole.  READ MORE