National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden's new refugee document granted by Russia is seen during a news conference in Moscow on Thursday, August 1. Snowden slipped quietly out of the airport on Thursday after securing temporary asylum in Russia, ending more than a month in limbo. 
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, leaves a last-minute news conference at the U.S. Capitol after Russia announced that it would grant Snowden temporary asylum on August 1. "Russia has stabbed us in the back, and each day that Mr. Snowden is allowed to roam free is another twist of the knife," he said. 
Snowden's father, Lon Snowden, who has adamantly supported his son, talks to reporters in Washington on Tuesday, July 30. He has urged his son to remain in Russia "until we have assurances that he would receive a fair trial." 
Demonstrators in Berlin hold a protest march on Saturday, July 27, in support of Snowden and WikiLeaks document provider Bradley Manning. Both men have been portrayed as traitors and whistle-blowers. Manning was acquitted on July 30 on the most serious charge of aiding the enemy, but he was convicted on several other counts and likely faces a lengthy term in a military prison. 
Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, center, speaks with journalists at the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow after meeting with Snowden on Wednesday, July 24. Kucherena said he was in daily contact with Russian authorities about securing permission for Snowden to leave the airport. 
Snowden meets with human rights activists and lawyers on July 12 in a transit zone of the Russian airport. It was his first public appearance since he left Hong Kong on June 23. He announced that he was seeking refuge Russia while awaiting safe passage to Latin America, where he has been offered asylum. 
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Prokhorovka on July 12. Russian officials said Snowden abandoned his effort to seek asylum in the country after Putin warned that he would have to stop leaking information about U.S. surveillance programs if he wanted to stay. 
A woman burns American flags during a protest in support of Bolivian President Evo Morales in front of the U.S. embassy in Mexico City on July 4. Leftist Latin American leaders and activists were fuming after some European nations temporarily refused Morales' plane access to their airspace amid suspicions Snowden was aboard. 
Bolivian President Evo Morales holds a news conference at the Vienna International Airport on July 3. He angrily denied any wrongdoing after his plane was diverted to Vienna and said that Bolivia is willing to give asylum to Snowden, as "fair protest" after four European countries restricted his plane from flying back from Moscow to La Paz. 
Umbrellas with slogans are lined up before a protest march to the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong on June 15. Snowden was hiding in Hong Kong, where he arrived on May 20 before blowing the lid off the NSA surveillance operation. 
Protesters in Hong Kong shout slogans in support of Snowden on June 13. The NSA leaker vowed to fight any bid to extradite him from Hong Kong. 
Graffiti sympathetic to Snowden is stenciled on the sidewalk in San Francisco on June 11. 
An American flag flutters in front of the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong on June 10. 
Snowden outs himself on June 9 in the British newspaper The Guardian, which published details of his revelations about the NSA electronic surveillance programs. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said in a video interview. 
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- Daniel Treisman says Putin often takes anti-American stances to shore up his support
- He writes that the Snowden affair has put Putin in a difficult bind
- He says Putin can't be seen to be subservient to U.S. but doesn't want a fight
- Treisman: U.S. needs Russian support on some key international issues
Editor's note: Daniel Treisman is a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of "The Return: Russia's Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev."
(CNN) -- In Russian, there is an old saying: "An uninvited guest is worse than a Tatar," referring to the country's medieval invaders from the East.
Although Edward Snowden's lawyer calls him "the most wanted man on the planet," it's clear that Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, would rather he were just about anywhere else.
After five weeks in Sheremetyevo Airport's transit zone, the NSA leaker was allowed to leave on Thursday under a grant of temporary asylum valid for one year. A taxi spirited him to an undisclosed Moscow location, where Putin's Federal Security Service will undoubtedly be watching him closely.
To some in the U.S., Snowden's Sheremetyevo escapade seems to have Putin written all over it. The Russian president, who once compared the U.S.'s behavior abroad to that of the Third Reich, seems to rarely miss an opportunity to score points at Washington's expense.
Yet the reality is that Putin did not seek out this problem, and now that his agents have presumably debriefed Snowden, he would much prefer for it to disappear.
Snowden was -- and remains -- an uninvited guest. Russia's intelligence agencies did not lure the NSA contractor to Moscow. It is not even clear how much they will have learned from him. Russian intelligence must have known already that the NSA was comprehensively monitoring telephone and Internet traffic.
Putin, who has never shown a soft spot for whistle-blowers and civil libertarians, is certainly not sheltering Snowden on humanitarian grounds. As a former KGB colonel, he understands the U.S. intelligence community's desire to get the leaker back.
Edward Snowden's father talks Amnesty 
How Snowden affects US-Russia relations 
Russia gives Snowden temporary asylum But Putin is stuck. He cannot extradite Snowden to the U.S. without looking subservient. At the same time, he has no real interest in further damaging relations with Washington.
That might seem strange given the angry rhetoric that regularly issues from Moscow, in particular from the Parliament, where Putin's United Russia party dominates. Just in December, Putin signed a bill banning the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans.
However, anti-Americanism has always been a complicated game for the Russian president. On the one hand, it plays well in the provinces. Since December 2011, when Moscow's boulevards erupted into protest, Putin has faced the most serious political challenge of his career. Having lost the support of sophisticated urbanites, his priority has been to shore up his provincial base.
One key strategy has been to appeal to more traditional and nationalist constituencies. Kremlin operatives attempt to discredit Putin's critics by portraying them as stooges for an interventionist Washington that seeks to interfere in Russian domestic life. In 2007, Putin compared his opponents to "jackals," scrounging around outside foreign embassies for handouts.
Although exploiting xenophobia may seem crude, it works with some segments of the population. Putin wins widespread credit for standing up for Russia's rights and restoring the country's position in the world.
Still, while insisting on Russian sovereignty, Putin loses the aura of a skilled statesman if his policies provoke genuine crises. Behind the scenes, and even in public, he has sought accommodation on certain international issues. Putin, the anti-American in chief, personally faced down communist protesters to permit NATO to build a transit hub in the city of Ulyanovsk.
Some in Washington have urged President Obama to skip the G20 summit in St. Petersburg in September. Sen. Lindsey Graham even suggested boycotting the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Putin would clearly like to avoid such snubs.
But were they to occur, he would cast them as yet another show of U.S. arrogance, a slap in the face not for him personally but for Russia. Assuming the leaders of Western European countries -- where many sympathize with Snowden -- do come to St. Petersburg, the final impression produced by Obama's empty chair might be less of Russian humiliation than of U.S. isolation.
For this and other reasons, the White House would probably also prefer to move beyond the Snowden issue. The U.S. public appears ambivalent at this point, uncomfortable about both Snowden's law-breaking and the scope of government snooping.
Yet the longer the issue remains in the public eye, the more embarrassing it is likely to become for the administration. For a U.S. attorney general to have to guarantee that a suspect would not be tortured if returned shows how much has changed over the past 12 years. The more officials turn out to have "misspoken" in denying existing surveillance programs, the lower trust in government is likely to sink.
At the same time, the U.S. has a broader agenda on which it needs to negotiate with Moscow. Syria continues to bleed. Although odds of a breakthrough are low, a joint U.S.-Russian peace conference is supposed to take place in Geneva this fall. The Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs remain urgent challenges. On these and other issues, Russia's U.N. Security Council seat makes it a crucial player.
Through 2014, as U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the NATO transport route across Russian territory will remain important. If Secretary of State John Kerry's latest attempt to revive Middle East peace talks is to bear fruit, the U.S. will at least need to persuade Russia not to become a spoiler.
Finally, even on Snowden, the White House may not want to push the Russians too far. As Andrew Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, points out, the U.S. could do worse than to have Snowden remain -- under tight control -- in Moscow.
If Putin honors his pledge to stop Snowden harming what Putin called his "American partners," then at least further leaks will be prevented. Were the Russians in frustration to put their uninvited guest on a plane to Ecuador or Cuba, the next morning's newspapers might contain additional revelations.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Daniel Treisman.
