MOSCOW -- Edward Snowden, the U.S. intelligence contractor who leaked several secret documents and then fled to Russia, has been granted a three-year residence permit, his lawyer announced Thursday.
Anatoly Kucherena, the lawyer, said Snowden had not been given asylum in Russia but rather had been granted permission to live there until 2017, Russian media reported.
His new status includes the right to leave Russia for up to three months, Kucherena said. Snowden, 31, had originally planned to head to Latin America for asylum. Anger in Germany at U.S. surveillance also has prompted some discussion there about whether Snowden should be allowed to live in Germany.
But he has so far avoided leaving Russia lest the United States find a way to arrest and prosecute him.
His previous, year-long residence permit, granted in August 2013, expired July 31, and a new one had been expected. His lawyer filed the paperwork earlier this summer.
Snowden is wanted by the U.S. government after he admitted exposing numerous secret intelligence documents, including a program by the National Security Agency to monitor millions of email messages.
Senior government officials have called him a traitor, while Snowden has said he is a whistleblower who exposed an illegal government surveillance program.
Without going into many details, Kucherena said Snowden was living on a salary earned from an unspecified job in the information technology field, and on donations into an open fund from individuals and nongovernmental organizations.
The lawyer said his client was learning to speak Russian and that he would be eligible to become a citizen after living there for five years, counted from his first residence permit granted in 2013.
Asked about Snowden's living arrangements in Moscow, Kucherena said that he could not comment in detail but indicated that Snowden was not on the Russian government dole.
"The government cannot provide him with housing, despite the fact that he was granted a residence permit," Kucherena said. "He leads a rather modest lifestyle."
Kucherena also denied that Snowden was protected by government bodyguards, saying there would be all manner of "bureaucratic delays" for such protection to be organized.
But Snowden did live with private security, the lawyer said, a priority given hostile U.S. government statements about him.
The welcome mat for Snowden was in sharp contrast to that of another U.S. citizen living in Russia, Jennifer Gaspar, 43, who has been ordered deported by the Russian federal security service, or FSB, the successor agency to the KGB. In the deportation order issued by the Federal Migration Service that arrived at her St. Petersburg home Tuesday, she was described as "a threat to national security."
Gaspar's Russian husband, Ivan Pavlov, is an outspoken human-rights attorney who has pushed for a more transparent government, the very argument Snowden has been making about the U.S. government in his own defense.
The two, who have a 5-year-old Russian daughter, think Gaspar is being deported as a means to push Pavlov into exile. The government agencies involved have declined to comment. They are appealing the deportation order.
Last year, the U.S. government charged Snowden with theft of government property, revealing information about national defense and leaking classified information to an unauthorized person.
Snowden spent some 40 days in the transit lounge of Sheremetyevo Airport, Moscow's main international gateway, after he was stuck there when the United States revoked his passport.
The initial residence permit granted to him considerably soured relations between Washington and Moscow, prompting President Barack Obama to cancel a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
A Section on 08/08/2014