In a move likely to enrage the US, Putin said on Monday: "If he wants to go somewhere and someone will take him, go ahead. “If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: He must cease his work aimed at inflicting damage to our American partners, as strange as it may sound from my lips.” 
 
 He added, “Because he sees himself as a human-rights activist and a freedom fighter for people’s rights, apparently he is not intending to cease this work. The meeting took place at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, where Snowden has apparently holed up in a transit lounge since fleeing from Hong Kong while seeking a route to Ecuador or somewhere else that might grant him asylum.  MOSCOW -- Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked U.S. security secrets and is now a fugitive, met Monday morning with Russian diplomatic officials and handed them an appeal to 15 countries for political asylum, a Russian Foreign Ministry official told The Times. “Snowden's actions were motivated by a desire to protect human rights and freedoms and now many rights activists in Russia are talking about him as a human rights advocate who deserves to be granted asylum, although this measure is fraught with some political inconveniences for Russia,” he said. When that will happen, I unfortunately don’t know.” 
 
 Mr. Putin’s comments reflected an increasingly sober view of the outcome if Mr. Snowden remains in Russia. “In the given circumstances, Russia has two workable options: Firstly is to provide Snowden with some refugee-status papers so that he could buy a ticket and leave for some other country, or secondly to grant him political asylum,” Kabanov said in an interview with The Times.
– Although journalists have been staking out Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport all week, no one has caught a glimpse of Edward Snowden, which means reporting on exactly what he's been doing there has been a little ... messy. Case in point: Multiple media agencies, including the New York Times and the Guardian are reporting today that Snowden has applied for political asylum in Russia, based on information from an official at the airport's consulate, who says that a WikiLeaks activist traveling with him delivered his request to the consulate last night. The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, says an anonymous Russian official claims Snowden applied for asylum to 15 different countries, but wouldn't say which countries they were. But the Russian Federal Migration Service denies that Snowden has applied for asylum, according to RT, which notes that a consular employee cannot make comments on behalf of the ministry. A presidential spokesperson also denied it had received the asylum request, RIA Novosti reports. So for now, the truth remains as elusive as Snowden himself. (Though he did just publish a statement saying Obama had left him "stateless.")