It must have been somewhat painful for Edward Snowden to turn down asylum in Russia. Stranded for more than a week in a Moscow airport, the fugitive from U.S. justice seems to have few places left to hide. He is wanted for exposing the secret methods of his former bosses in America's intelligence agencies, and a handful of countries have already refused to shelter him, likely fearing the fury of Washington. But desperate as his situation has become, Snowden seems to have refused the one condition President Vladimir Putin set for granting him asylum: He refused to stop leaking the secrets of the U.S. government. On Tuesday morning, Putin's spokesman revealed this news with a tone just shy of relief. "[Snowden] has turned away from his intentions and from his request to receive the opportunity to stay in Russia," said Dmitri Peskov. "Due to his own heartfelt convictions or for some other reasons, Snowden sees himself as a rights activist, a warrior for democratic ideals, for human freedoms." Those ideals were apparently incompatible with the caveat Putin laid out the previous day when he agreed to grant Snowden asylum under one condition: "He must stop doing work aimed at harming our American partners," Putin said, "however strange that may sound coming from my lips." (MORE: Putin to Offer Snowden Asylum, but With a Catch) This sounded strange from those lips because defending the interests of the U.S. government is not exactly Putin's forte. Since taking a third term in office last May Putin has revived the Soviet-era dogma of anti-Americanism using a lot of the rhetoric he internalized during his days as a KGB colonel. Relations with Washington have sunk since then to the lowest point in a generation, with Putin famously declaring during his re-election bid last year that the U.S. "does not need allies; it needs vassals." His foreign policy centers these days on a refusal to be a U.S. vassal state, or even a cooperative partner. He has picked fights over U.S. adoptions of Russian children, over(http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=world.time.com&blog=19871253&post=92600&subd=timeglobalspin&ref=&feed=1)
TIME GlobalSpin