July 12, 2013

MOSCOW — In a high-profile spectacle that had the hallmarks of a Kremlin-approved event, Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive American intelligence contractor, broke his silence after three weeks of seclusion on Friday, telling a handpicked group of Russian public figures that he hoped to receive political asylum in Russia.

The guests, several of them closely aligned with President Vladimir V. Putin, were invited through a mysterious e-mail that many had thought was fake and then swept past passport control into the restricted border zone where Mr. Snowden has been confined since his arrival on June 23.

When they emerged, it appeared more likely that Mr. Snowden would be granted his wish and remain in Russia as he waits for conditions that would allow him to travel safely to Latin America, where three countries have offered him asylum.

Russia allowed Mr. Snowden to fly into Moscow, and officials have clearly relished the opportunity to embrace an American dissident after weathering years of Western criticism of their human rights record.

But once Mr. Snowden was ensconced in the airport, the prospect of his long-term presence in Russia apparently seemed less appealing. His first request for asylum two weeks ago was discouraged, and Russia has taken pains to portray itself as neutral. Since then, Mr. Snowden’s options have narrowed, and so have the Kremlin’s, said Dmitri V. Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research center in Moscow.

“They cannot keep him here indefinitely, they cannot extradite himself to the U.S., they cannot send him out of the country so that he can be picked up,” Mr. Trenin said. “The government at this stage feels they have to do something to end this stalemate, and the only way to end the stalemate is to go to a default position — that has always been that he stays in Russia and observes certain rules.”

The Kremlin has laid some groundwork for holding Mr. Snowden on a more permanent basis. Ten days ago, perhaps in an attempt to limit damage to the bilateral relationship, Mr. Putin said Mr. Snowden could stay only if he agreed to “cease his work aimed at inflicting damage on our American partners.” A number of conservative, Kremlin-connected figures have praised Mr. Snowden as a defender of human rights and called for granting asylum.

On Friday evening, President Obama talked to Mr. Putin by phone in their first conversation since Mr. Snowden arrived in Moscow. The White House offered no details about the call, other than to issue a statement saying the two had discussed “the status of Mr. Edward Snowden” as well as issues like counterterrorism and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Earlier Friday, Mr. Putin’s spokesman reiterated the Russian president’s previous offer, and human rights figures who participated in the airport event reported that Mr. Snowden said he accepted the conditions. But Mr. Snowden has said on numerous occasions that he did not think his disclosures had hurt American interests, and it remained unclear whether he planned to continue leaking classified documents.

The developments precede by just two months Mr. Obama’s scheduled visit to Moscow and St. Petersburg, part of an effort to reinvigorate a relationship that has declined sharply over the last year.

The White House complained that the prospect of Russian asylum would violate Moscow’s own stated desire to avoid any further damage to American national security, but it also said that the United States did not want the episode to undercut relations.

“Providing a propaganda platform for Mr. Snowden runs counter to the Russian government’s previous declarations of Russia’s neutrality and that they have no control over his presence in the airport,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. “It’s also incompatible with Russian assurances that they do not want Mr. Snowden to further damage U.S. interests.”

But Mr. Carney added, “We don’t believe this should, and we don’t want it to do harm to our important relationship with Russia.”

Nevertheless, the administration’s rapt attention to the case was evident on Friday morning. A Human Rights Watch representative, Tanya Lokshina, said an embassy staff member had called her as she was en route to the meeting.

The caller said the ambassador “asked me to share with you the official position of the U.S. authorities so that you can share it with Mr. Snowden,’ ” Ms. Lokshina said. “He said the U.S. authorities did not consider him to be a human rights defender and a whistle-blower. He broke the law and he has to be held accountable.”

A State Department official acknowledged that an embassy staff member had made the call, but said that Ms. Lokshina had not been asked to convey any message to Mr. Snowden.

In remarks on Friday, the United Nations’ top human rights official said that there should be greater protections for Mr. Snowden and others like him who disclose human rights violations.

“Snowden’s case has shown the need to protect persons disclosing information on matters that have implications for human rights, as well as the importance of ensuring respect for the right to privacy,” the official, Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement released in Geneva.

She added, “National legal systems must ensure that there are adequate avenues for individuals disclosing violations of human rights to express their concern without fear of reprisals.”

In addition, the presidents of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela issued a resolution on Friday voicing solidarity with the countries in the region that have offered asylum to Mr. Snowden and condemned surveillance practices like those he disclosed.

The meeting in Moscow unfolded in an atmosphere of mystery, beginning late on Thursday, when a series of about a dozen Russian figures — lawyers, human rights workers and some political commentators — received an e-mailed invitation signed “Edward Joseph Snowden.” Many assumed it was a fake, but by the appointed meeting time of 5 p.m. at least 150 reporters had massed at the airport, eager for any sign of Mr. Snowden, whose presence in Moscow had not once been visually documented.

A man in a black suit appeared, holding a sign that read G9, the signal described in the invitation from Mr. Snowden, and said, “Invited guests, come with me.” He led them down a long corridor and guided them onto a waiting bus, as police officers fended off the journalists.

Around 45 minutes later, the guests emerged to a bank of cameras.

“Mr. Snowden is not a phantom, such a man exists,” said Genri M. Reznik, a prominent Russian defense lawyer. Vladimir P. Lukin, Russia’s human rights commissioner, told Russian television: “I shook his hand. I could feel skin and bones.”

Mr. Lukin added: “He said that of course he is concerned about freedom of movement, lack of it, but as for the rest, he is not complaining about this living conditions. As he said, ‘I’ve seen worse situations.’ ”

Ms. Lokshina described Mr. Snowden as “like a college kid,” shy and barely looking up from his written statement as he read it. In the statement, he accused the United States of “a serious violation of the law” in its metadata mining programs and ridiculed Washington’s argument “that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair.”

He said that “Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful,” and added that “some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law” by blocking his travel.

Though the Kremlin earlier signaled reluctance to consider Mr. Snowden’s application — an initial request submitted on June 30 was withdrawn — now it seems quite likely to grant it. After the meeting, Anatoly Kucherena, a Kremlin-connected lawyer who also was on the list of invitees, told Russian television that he believed the decision on whether to grant Mr. Snowden political asylum could be made within two or three weeks.

The request must first be addressed to the Federal Migration Service, which will then send its recommendation to a presidential commission that governs citizenship.

The question of whether Mr. Snowden should receive asylum has been hotly debated in Russia, with conservative-leaning Kremlin loyalists and many human rights figures vocally supportive of the idea. Public figures began to emerge with fresh statements of support shortly after Mr. Snowden’s meeting with human rights figures ended.

“I consider Edward Snowden a human rights defender, who speaks for the rights of millions and millions of people all over the world,” said Sergei Naryshkin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of Parliament and a close Putin ally. He noted that the United States still has capital punishment, and said, “I think there is a very high risk that this punishment awaits Edward Snowden.”

In fact, the charges that Mr. Snowden faces do not carry the death penalty upon conviction.

Mr. Snowden, 30, and his supporters describe him as a whistle-blower who exposed privacy abuses by the United States government. He flew from Hong Kong to Moscow on June 23, evidently planning to catch a connecting flight to Latin America, but after he landed it was announced that the United States had invalidated his passport, so that he could not legally board a plane.

Meanwhile, the United States has conducted a diplomatic full-court press in an effort to prevent Mr. Snowden from receiving asylum in Bolivia, Nicaragua or Venezuela, three left-leaning governments that have said they would take him in.

At the meeting on Friday, Mr. Snowden asked the assembled human rights figures to petition on his behalf, both to the United States — so that it will not block his efforts to receive asylum — and to Mr. Putin. He told his guests that he had been forced to turn to Russia for asylum because he could not travel to Latin America safely.

“He made it fairly clear that he would not want to stay in Russia indefinitely,” Ms. Lokshina said in an interview.