The only thing Snowden does, he does publicly.”
Nor did he transfer any information to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people. “He did not betray the interests of his country. In a clip from Stone’s film, Putin also denies that Snowden handed over any information. Snowden is still in Moscow, and has always denied cooperating in any way with Russian intelligence. “He came as a transit passenger, so he didn’t need a visa or other documents.” “Mr Snowden arrived in Moscow, which was completely unexpected for us,” said Putin at the time. Snowden’s story was that he had merely been using Moscow as a transit hub and had planned to continue his journey but had his passport annulled by US authorities.Īt the time, Putin and other Russian officials gave the impression that the first Russia knew of Snowden was when he arrived in Moscow with the intention to transit to Latin America. The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported at the time that Snowden had spent time at the Russian consulate in Hong Kong before he boarded a flight to Moscow, but this has not been confirmed. “We were told back then that this was a person who wanted to fight against violations of human rights.” “Our first contact with Mr Snowden was in China,” said Putin, according to Bloomberg. In one of the more curious moments in the interview, Putin appeared to change the story of how Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower, ended up in Moscow. From the clips released so far, the tone is rarely confrontational, and Putin’s answers are rarely fact-checked or countered. Stone has previously released a film about the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine, which reiterates the Russian argument that the events were directed by US intelligence, and will have been seen by the Kremlin as a friendly interlocutor. The interviews will be released in four hour-long episodes, beginning next week, on the US cable channel Showtime. The pair are captured sitting down to watch the Stanley Kubrick film Dr Strangelove. The president is also shown driving Stone around Moscow, and describing his daily weightlifting regime. Why provoke him? But you know, I’m a judo master,” said Putin, laughing. “I prefer not to go to the shower with him. When asked whether he would be comfortable showering next to a gay man, he said no. Putin also used the interview to deny there was any persecution of gay people in Russia, despite a law being passed against the “propaganda of homosexuality among minors” and recent reports of a “gay purge” in the Russian republic of Chechnya.