Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that he’d rather not intervene in the case of Edward Snowden, who is wanted in the U.S. on charges of espionage for leaking National Security Agency secrets, and likened navigating the diplomacy of the situation to “shearing a pig.”
“I’d prefer not to deal with this issue at all—it’s like shearing a pig—too much squeaking, too little wool,” Putin said during a news conference in Turku, Finland, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
Putin announced Snowden was free to transit out of Russia, adding “the sooner he chooses his final destination, the better it will be for us and for him.”
