Story about a very different kind of dissident and exile; couldn't help but wonder if he still sympathizes with Edward Snowden, which isn't revealed:

Once Celebrated in Russia, the Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile
By Danny Hakim, New York Times, Dec. 2/3, 2014

LONDON — When a SWAT team appeared at Pavel Durov’s door in St. Petersburg, he started thinking about his future in Russia.

He was home alone, and he peered at them through a monitor.

“They had guns and they looked very serious,” said Mr. Durov, once Russia’s biggest celebrity entrepreneur. “They seemed to want to break the door.”

Not long ago, Mr. Durov, 30, was seen as Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg. He founded a social network, VKontakte, which is more popular in Russia than Facebook, and made a splash by publicly offering Edward Snowden a job.

Then the Kremlin tightened its grip over the Internet and President Vladimir V. Putin’s allies took control of VKontakte. Mr. Durov eventually sold his remaining stake for millions and fled Russia in April, after resisting government pressure to release the data of Ukrainian protest leaders.

Mr. Durov, known for his subversive wit and an all-black wardrobe that evokes Neo from the “Matrix” movies, is now a little-seen nomad, moving from country to country every few weeks with a small band of computer programmers. One day he is in Paris, another in Singapore.

“Me myself, I’m not a big fan of the idea of countries,” Mr. Durov said, wearing a custom-made cross between a hoodie and a sport coat.

When he arrived with little warning in London for his first interview outside cyberspace since leaving Russia, he was en route to San Francisco, where he appeared at a technology conference on Tuesday. He is surfacing to showcase his new messaging app, Telegram, for people craving privacy and security.

His odyssey reflects the changing nature of the Internet in Russia [....]