Well, We’ve Done a GoodDeed and One-Upped the US

I can imagine how fed up he is by now with that cell in Sheremetyevo!

After all, what is so bad about a confined space?

A lack of perspective!

You start to wildly miss space and perspective. Photos of monuments, city streets, landscapes are helpful …

I know this from personal experience, after sitting in a few prisons for more than two years.

Even strangers, who sympathized with my fate, sent me photo albums. It helped.

And now my namesake is riding in a taxi from Sheremetyevo, looking at the Russian landscape. He should like it, because it’s August, there’s no rain in the afternoon, and the sun is even peering through.

They say he went to the Hungry Duck, a famous place among foreigners, where in the 1990s naked girls danced on the tables. I think the CIA and National Security Agency employees have fantasized entire legends for themselves about this place.

It’s unlikely that the Hungry Duck has remained in the same unbridled form it was in the ’90s. But let him go there. Where else should a young man, who sat in a cage at Sheremetyevo go, if not to a supposed girls’ gathering.

It’s just great that he was granted asylum! They did the right thing.

They did not let themselves be intimidated by the vague threats that the U.S. initially used. Although later, the U.S. dialed it down and, more recently, had started to act like a timid, rather than arrogant, blackmailer.

Russia acted as an independent, serious country. Now, I’m sure we will carry more weight in the world.

And leftist Latin American countries — Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua and others — will cheer up because there is an independent country in the world that dares to deny persistent requests to hand over a refugee to the insolent Yankees, who behave themselves like they are the only ones in charge in this world.

And all the other countries that tend to behave independently will also be encouraged and will use us as an example. Perhaps a block of nonaligned countries will emerge. Such a block once existed.

It’s a simple story.

Edward Snowden was outraged by the vicious behavior of the country where he was born. And he rebelled.

The rebel had to flee from the intelligence agency of his own brazen country, which considers itself the autocratic ruler of the planet.

And then it turned out that no one was brave enough to grant him asylum.

Or they were brave, but Edward Snowden could not reach those countries because the Yankees would have forced the plane with Snowden aboard to land in any country in Europe and Asia, wherever the Yankees pleased. Remember the incident with the president of Ecuador’s plane?*

And finally, apparently after some hesitation, Russia decided to do it.

I would venture to suggest that, among other things — well, other than the desire to grant asylum to a persecuted guy — the Russian government recalled that the U.S. has seized Russian citizens on another country’s territory numerous times in a predatory manner and then inevitably dragged its haul back home, tried Russian citizens using U.S. laws, and put them in American prisons.

I think this played a role because such behavior by the U.S. has angered and unnerved us. You cannot grab our citizens. These are our citizens.

No one is allowed to do that.

I’m glad. I’m glad that Snowden will now be here. This holds a lot of pros for us.

I’d like to point out that among the many human rights activists, who call themselves as such in Russia, very few spoke out in favor of granting asylum to Snowden.

Obviously, many did not want to spoil their relationship with the United States. That’s how I explain their behavior.

Welcome to Russia, Edward!

We’re happy to have you here.

*Editor’s note: Although accurately translated, it was the president of Bolivia not Ecuador’s plane.