Sept 26 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Monday granted Russian citizenship to former U.S.

intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, nine years after he exposed the scale of secret surveillance operations by the National Security Agency (NSA).

The new tweet made no reference to the Kremlin leader's decree, but it was attached to a 2020 Twitter thread in which Snowden said he and his family were applying for dual U.S.-Russian citizenship.

The news prompted some Russians to jokingly ask whether Snowden would be called up for military service, five days after Putin announced Russia's first public mobilization since World War Two to shore up its faltering invasion of Ukraine.

I don't know that he's renounced it," Price said in a press briefing.

Russia granted Snowden permanent residency rights in 2020, paving the way for him to obtain Russian citizenship.

Putin, a former Russian spy chief, said in 2017 that Snowden, who keeps a low profile while living in Russia, was wrong to leak U.S.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has said that Russian soldiers who die in the war against Ukraine will be cleansed of all their sins, days after President Vladimir Putin ordered the country's first mobilisation since World War Two.