Vladimir Putin during the nationwide phone-in in Moscow. Photograph: RIA Novosti/Reuters Today's question-and-answer session on Russian TV between NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Russian President Vladimir Putin did not go as Snowden had hoped. "I questioned the Russian president live on TV to get his answer on the record, not to whitewash him," Snowden says in an op-blog in the Guardian: On Thursday, I questioned Russia's involvement in mass surveillance on live television.