Russia Web Journalism Award Named For Edward Snowden

[karynnj]

5. Even from my limited knowledge of what Russia is doing, his criticsm is nowhere as tough

as he is on the US.

It is a very high bar, given the history of each country, to expect Russia to allow the freedoms that we take for granted. Snowden knows from personal experience that he, as a blogger, had far more freedom than the Russian bloggers. We have seen excerpts of his posts that are certainly not pro-government - yet he was not harassed for them and he still was able to get a job working with government secrets. This kind of flies in the face of believing that the government is watching every little thing everybody does! Some of the most embarrassing Snowden comments are those when he has praised Russia at the expense of the US - likely because he needed asylum tried to make that case.

However, I think that is to be expected. As a "guest", he really can not overtly offend his host. As to this, Snowden did not initiate it and he appears not to have answered it.