Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that NSA leaker Edward Snowden may stay in Russia, if he wants to, but only if he stops activities aimed against the United States.

“There is one condition if he wants to remain here: he must stop his work aimed at damaging our American partners. As odd as it may sound from me,” Putin told a media conference in Moscow.  

In Putin’s opinion, Snowden considers himself “a fighter for human rights” and it seems unlikely that he is going to stop leaking American secret data.

However, Russia is not going to extradite Snowden, the Putin underlined.

Snowden "is not a Russian agent", the president said, repeating that Russian intelligence services were not working with the fugitive American.

He said Snowden should choose his final destination and go there. Putin added that he has no idea when that is going to happen.

“If I knew, I would tell you now,” he told the media conference after the Forum of Gas Exporting Countries.

Putin and his US counterpart Barrack Obama instructed their nations’ security services – Russia’s FSB and America’s FBI respectively - to resolve the situation around the Snowden case, Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council said earlier on Monday.

The former CIA employee Snowden, who is behind the biggest leak in the NSA, has been stuck in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for over a week now, after he arrived in the Russian capital from Hong Kong.

The US annulled the whistleblower’s American passport and he presently has no other documents with which he can travel.