Snowden, who is holed up at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, has accused Washington of pressuring foreign leaders to refuse him refuge as he tries to evade justice for revealing a vast US spying programme that has strained ties with European allies.
"These are the old, bad tools of political aggression," Snowden said in a statement published Monday by the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks website.
"Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me."
WikiLeaks, which has been helping Snowden, said the 30-year-old had sent asylum requests to 21 countries.
Russia, Norway, Austria and Poland were among the first to confirm they had received the applications. Warsaw immediately rejected the request.
Snowden's latest major leak about US spying on EU countries has angered many European governments and threatens to derail preparations for talks on a huge free trade deal between Washington and Brussels.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday said Snowden was welcome to stay as long as he stopped leaking US intelligence reports.
"If he (Snowden) wants to remain here there is one condition -- he should stop his work aimed at inflicting damage on our American partners no matter how strange this may sound coming from me," Putin told reporters.
But after learning of that condition, a Kremlin spokesman said Snowden withdrew his request.
"He abandoned his intention and his request to receive the chance of staying in Russia," Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters.
Ecuador -- the first country to which Snowden applied for asylum -- had earlier voiced relief at the possibility of Russia taking in Snowden.
"My opinion is that the (asylum) request to the Russian government could definitely resolve Mr. Snowden's situation," President Rafael Correa told AFP in an interview.
That the Moscow option has reached a dead end could increase pressure on Ecuador, which has hesitated over the case in the face of possible economic sanctions from the United States.
Ecuador's London embassy is already harbouring WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange.
Snowden had remained quiet and out of sight of reporters since arriving in the transit zone of Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport from Hong Kong on June 23.
He had planned to travel on to Cuba the following day but never got on the flight because he apparently lacked the proper boarding papers after his US travel passport was revoked.
Breaking his silence for the first time since then, Snowden said in the statement published by WikiLeaks: "Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum."
Snowden also called Ecuador's treatment of those who stand up to US interests "an example to the world".
"There are few world leaders who would risk standing for the human rights of an individual against the most powerful government on earth, and the bravery of Ecuador and its people is an example to the world," Snowden wrote in a letter to Correa that was obtained by Britain's Press Association.
WikiLeaks employee Sarah Harrison said asylum requests had also been sent to Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Spain, Switzerland and Venezuela.
Putin himself said on Monday that Snowden sees himself as a political crusader for moral justice akin to the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winning Soviet-era dissident Andrei Sakharov.
The Kremlin chief suggested that this meant that Snowden was unlikely to meet Russia's condition of ending his leaks against the United States.
"Because he feels like a rights activist and defender of human rights all indications are that he is not going to stop this work. So he has to choose a country of residence for himself and move there."
Putin's spokesman Peskov said that Snowden had personally informed Russian officials that he was no longer interested in staying in Moscow.
But Peskov also emphasised that Russia had no intention of handing the fugitive over to the United States.
"The handover of Snowden to a country like the United States that applies the death penalty is impossible," Peskov told reporters.
US President Barack Obama for his part confirmed that there were high-level consultations between Moscow and Washington over Snowden's fate.
"We have gone through regular, law enforcement channels in enforcing the extradition request that we have made with respect to Mr Snowden," Obama said while on his African visit Monday.
"Mr Snowden, we understand, has travelled there without a valid passport, without legal papers. We are hopeful that the Russian government makes decisions based on the normal procedures regarding international travel.--Business Insider
Edward Joseph Snowden born June 21, 1983.He is a US former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (N.S.A.) and Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) employee.
who leaked details of top-secret US and British government mass surveillance programs to the press. London's The Guardian, which published a series of exposés based on Snowden's disclosures in June 2013,
Snowden revealed information about a variety of classified intelligence programs, including the interception of US and European telephone metadata and the PRISM and Tempora Internet surveillance programs. Snowden said the leaks were an effort "to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.
On June 14, 2013, US federal prosecutors filed a sealed complaint, made public on June 21, charging Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person; the latter two allegations are under the Espionage Act.
June 23-24-
The NSA whistleblower left Hong Kong on an Aeroflot flight to Moscow, two days after the US charged him with espionage, before applying for asylum in Ecuador...the guardian
Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor whose revelations to the Guardian about the scale and scope of US spying and hacking activities has prompted global headlines, has fled Hong Kong and is now in Moscow.
Ecuador's foreign minister has confirmed that Snowden has requested asylum in the country. WikiLeaks, legal advisors from which are traveling with Snowden, claim that Snowden is "bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum."
His plane arrived in Russia shortly after 5pm local time. Snowden is not believed to have a Russian visa and is thought to be staying overnight at a capsule hotel inside Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after reportedly being met on the tarmac by diplomatic cars.
Snowden was allowed to leave despite the US having filed a request for Hong Kong to arrest him. Hong Kong’s government said the documents sent by Washington did not fully meet legal requirements, the statement added, so Snowden was allowed to leave. It has since been reported that the US revoked Snowden’s passport on Saturday. It is not clear how he was allowed to leave Hong Kong if this happened.
There has been an angry reaction in the US to news of Snowden’s departure. Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, called Snowden “an individual who is not acting, in my opinion, with noble intent".
American politicians, frustrated over the U.S. inability to catch Snowden, are lashing out at Hong Kong, Russia, and those who would call Snowden's acts heroic.
Snowden's departure came on the same day the South China Morning Post carried detailed reports of claims from him about US actions against China, including allegations of the hacking of phone text messages. China has said it is “gravely concerned” about the revelations. The country’s Xinhua news agency called the US “the biggest villain in our age" when it comes to hacking.
June 30--
While Edward J Snowden has remained mysteriously hidden from sight during his visit to Russia this week, Russian television has been making him a hero.
On programs that were hastily arranged and broadcast on the two largest federal channels, he was compared to the dissident Andrei Sakharov, to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and to Max Otto von Stirlitz, a dashing fictional double agent from Soviet television.
He was described as "the man who declared war on Big Brother and got stuck in the transit zone," and as "a soldier in the information war, who fights, of course, on the side of Russia, or maybe the side of China."
July 2--
Nearly a month after going on the run as the world's most famous whistleblower, Edward Snowden's future looks increasingly bleak. The 29-year-old American remains stranded in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport amid the first signs that the countries he hoped would offer him a safe haven are instead succumbing to pressure from the United States. His predicament has led Snowden to accuse President Barack Obama in an angry statement released through WikiLeaks of not playing by the rules.
Snowden reminded the world that Obama had said last week he would "not permit any diplomatic 'wheeling and dealing' over my case". The whistleblower then said: "Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the president ordered his vice-president to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions. This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extra-legal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression."
Well, Ecuador has certainly changed its tune in recent days. Last month the South American country was hinting it would grant Snowden asylum but in an interview with The Guardian, president Rafael Correa appeared to wash his hands of the former intelligence operator. "Are we responsible for getting him to Ecuador? It's not logical. The country that has to give him a safe conduct document is Russia," said Correa. He also said it had been a "mistake on our part" to help Snowden travel from Hong Kong to Moscow on a temporary travel pass---the week.
