"We invite Edward Snowden to Petersburg and will be happy if he decides to join the star team of programmers at VKontakte," Pavel Durov, one of the founders of the St. Petersburg-based VKontakte, Russia's answer to Facebook, said on his profile on Thursday.

Durov said he took pride in Russia's decision to have Snowden work with them.

"Today Edward Snowden - the man who denounced US security services' crimes against citizens of the whole world - received temporary asylum in Russia," Durov said.

"In such moments one feels pride with our country and regret over the course taken by United States - a country betraying the principles it was once built on," he added.

Snowden's temporary asylum papers allow him to work in Russia, according to Anatoly Kucherena, a lawyer close to the Russian authorities, who has been assisting the American.

Moscow has refused to hand over the 30-year-old whistleblower to Washington after he leaked details of controversial US surveillance programs involving phone and Internet data.

The leak has turned to a big scandal for the US government and some of its allies including Germany and has raised widespread criticism from around the world.

Snowden arrived to Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23 has been stuck in the transit zone of the Sheremetyevo airport for more than a month before slipping out on Thursday with new refugee documents.

SHI/SHI