Former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has been officially granted residential rights to live in Russia in a move towards nationality.

According to the details, Mr. Snowden’s lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said the application had been postponed longer than usual due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Mr. Kucherena said, “His residency permit was expiring and we asked to extend it. We submitted the documents in April and we got the permanent residency rights (on Thursday).”

Edward Snowden has ultimately bestowed with the status of refugees in Russia after escaping the United States in the year of 2013. Mr. Snowden fled the country because of the criminal charges he faced for leaking the country’s confidential documents.

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Mr. Snowden was formerly the contractor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) but then he was charged with criminal indictments of espionage and robbery of government property in the US.

While United States President Donald Trump has considered exculpating Mr. Snowden, lawyer general William Barr said that he “vehemently opposed” to exonerating somebody who had given confidential data to America’s rivalries.

Mr. Snowden also told earlier that if he was given a fair trial, he would be open to returning to the US.

“That is the ultimate goal. But if I’m going to spend the rest of my life in prison, the one bottom-line demand that we all have to agree to is that at least I get a fair trial. And that’s the one thing the government has refused to guarantee because they won’t provide access to what’s called a public interest defence,” he concluded.