MOSCOW – Russia granted American fugitive Edward Snowden one year’s asylum on Thursday, Aug. 1, allowing the former U.S. spy agency contractor to slip quietly out of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, after more than five weeks in limbo,  and angering the United States.

The White House, which wants Snowden sent home to face trial for leaking details of government surveillance programs, signaled that President Barack Obama might boycott a summit with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in September, and one official said that high-level talks, next week, were “up in the air.”

“We see this as an unfortunate development, and we are extremely disappointed by it,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. “We are evaluating the utility of the summit.”

Snowden has avoided the hordes of reporters trying to find him since he landed from Hong Kong on June 23 and gave them the slip-again, as he left the transit area where he had been stuck. Almost unnoticed, he was driven away from the airport by car.