Edward Snowden to start job at large Russian website

Edward Snowden, who is now living off scant donations under Russia asylum since July, will be starting a job at an undisclosed but large Russian website.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has found a job working for a website in Russia, where he was granted asylum after fleeing the United States, a Russian lawyer who is helping him said on Thursday.

“Edward starts work in November,” lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said, according to state-run news agency RIA.

“He will provide support for a large Russian site,” he said, adding that he would not name the site “for security reasons.”

Edward Snowden, 30, a former National Security Agency contractor who disclosed secret U.S. internet telephone surveillance programs, fled to Hong Kong and then to Russia in June.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected U.S. pleas to send Edward Snowden home to face charges including espionage, and the temporary asylum he was granted in early August can be extended annually.

Edward Snowden’s location in Russia has not been disclosed and since July he has appeared only in a handful of photographs and video clips from a meeting this month with visiting former US national security officials who support his cause.

Vladimir Putin, a former KGB spy, said repeatedly that Russia would only shelter Edward Snowden if he stopped harming the US.

But state media have treated him as a whistleblower and the decision to grant him asylum seemed to underscore Vladimir Putin’s accusations that the US government preaches to the world about rights and freedoms it does not uphold at home.

Vladimir Putin has dismissed the widespread assumption that Russian intelligence officers had grilled Edward Snowden for information after he arrived, and Anqatoly Kucherena has portrayed him as trying to live as normal a life as possible under the circumstances.

He said earlier that he hoped Edward Snowden would find a job because he was living on scant funds, mostly from donations.

A tabloid news site on Thursday published what it said was a photo of Edward Snowden on a Moscow river cruise this summer, and the same site earlier published a photo of a man who looked like Snowden pushing a shopping cart in a supermarket parking lot.