Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday extended an offer of “political asylum” to former FBI Director James Comey if he found himself being “persecuted” by President Donald Trump.

In a video posted by RT, Putin expressed his willingness to let Comey live in Russia if Trump tried to prosecute him for leaking his own non-classified memos about their interactions to the media.

ADVERTISEMENT

“If there is some kind of persecution, we would be ready to offer political asylum to Mr. Comey, if he’s persecuted in the U.S.,” Putin said, while at the same time making a case that Comey was very similar to Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked information about the agency’s surveillance activities and who was subsequently granted asylum in Russia.

The Russian president has regularly commented on the state of American politics while dismissing his own country’s role in interfering in the 2016 presidential election. He told NBC’s Megyn Kelly earlier this month, for instance, that she needed to take a “pill” to cure her “hysteria” over Russia’s interference in American elections.

Watch the video below.