The ongoing saga involving Edward Snowden and his uncovering of the NSA's spying program on Americans took yet another interesting turn Thursday. Snowden was formally granted asylum in Russia and has since left his secret location in Moscow's Sheremetyevo  International Airport.

Snowden had been holed up in the airport since Jun. 23, unable to formally enter Russia but unable to leave it as well. After over a month of uncertainty, during which Snowden appealed to quite a few nations for asylum, he finally had his paperwork approved by the Kremlin.

"Edward was granted a one-year asylum and I just saw him to a taxi out of the airport," Snowden's lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told the Los Angeles Times. "It is up to him to choose a residence inside Russia, but his location will remain secret for the duration of his stay. For the most wanted man on earth, personal safety is his No. 1 priority now."

Clearly, that decision by Russia did not go over well with the United States. The U.S. has long insisted that Snowden be returned to America so that he can be prosecuted for divulging potentially damaging governmental secrets to the world. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has been particularly vocal at his disappointment with Russia.

"Russia's action today is a disgrace and a deliberate effort to embarrass [the U.S.]," McCain said in a statement. "It is a slap in the face of all Americans," McCain said, calling for the U.S. to "fundamentally rethink" its relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Though Putin insists that he did not make the decision to allow Snowden to stay in the country, many believe that an international relations issue with the magnitude of Snowden would certainly have required the president's blessings. The move may very well be a sign of international aggression against a United States that many countries now feel has invaded their personal privacy.

Snowden originally fled to Hong Kong when he divulged his story of the NSA's spying program to Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian. After hiding out there for a while he ended up in the Moscow airport, where he subsequently became engulfed in an international tug-of-war.

"It was a humane decision because Edward couldn't come and buy himself tickets to Havana or any other countries since he had no passport," the attorney told the news outlet. "So Russia behaved very honest in this situation."

Snowden's revelations about the way the NSA used information provided by Google and Facebook to spy have led to widespread outrage both in the United States and abroad. Many American civilians feel betrayed by a government they feel has drastically overstepped its boundaries, while many foreign countries feel the U.S. acted undiplomatically by not revealing the extent of its operations online.