Last November, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden was beamed in from somewhere in Russia to address a crowd of Ohio State University students.

“Democracy only works for all of us when we all work to uphold the system,” Snowden, appearing on a giant video screen, told the sold-out crowd of about 1,700. “The letters of the constitution are not going to jump off the page and protect your rights. People give those letters strength.”

The university paid $30,000 through an American speakers’ bureau to digitally host Snowden, one of his largest known contracts to date, according to documents obtained by Yahoo Finance. The Ohio State event was one of a series of speeches that have netted Snowden — who is still a fugitive in the eyes of the U.S. government — well over $200,000 in the past two years, as Yahoo News first reported last year. He has continued to give paid speeches, including at U.S. colleges, in 2017.

The ongoing speaking contracts come at a time when Snowden’s fate and influence are more uncertain than ever. A campaign by Snowden’s supporters to win him a pardon was rebuffed by the outgoing Obama White House, and new President Donald Trump previously labeled him a “terrible traitor.”

Moreover, Snowden’s efforts to present himself as an Internet privacy pioneer are now complicated by an American political environment colored by increasing wariness and hostility toward Snowden’s host since June 2013: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

View photos The July 31, 2013, document granting Snowden asylum in Russia for one year. More

‘It definitely looks bad’

In January, U.S. intelligence agencies publicly asserted that the Kremlin executed an elaborate influence campaign aimed at hurting the candidacy of Putin foe Hillary Clinton and boosting the candidacy of Putin admirer Donald Trump. (U.S. agencies are also investigating contacts between Trump campaign aides and Russian officials.)

“There is no question that there has been a dramatic shift in the surveillance debate in the U.S. since the Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election,” Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University, told Yahoo Finance in an email.

EPIC is currently attempting to compel the office of the director of national intelligence to release its complete assessment on Russia’s election interference. Rotenberg noted that the debate ignited by Snowden’s advocacy has given way to considerations of Russian meddling.

“Snowden raised important questions about the scope of U.S. government surveillance,” Rotenberg said. “And his efforts led to reforms, including passage of the Freedom Act. And he continues to make good arguments for legal control of surveillance authority. But now the focus is on understanding and preventing cyberattacks on democratic institutions. Without democratic institutions, it is not possible to enforce the rule of law.”

View photos Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Barack Obama at the G-20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou, China, in September 2016. (Alexei Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images) More

Snowden’s speaking events highlight his peculiar situation as a 33-year-old former U.S. intelligence contractor being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars from speaking contracts — some from public American colleges — while living under guard at an undisclosed location in the territory of a resurgent adversary.

“It definitely looks bad that he’s over there in Russia,” Chris Weber, a cybersecurity expert who co-authored the 2002 book Privacy Defended and supports more transparency about government surveillance, told Yahoo Finance. “It could be damaging to privacy advocates and to all of the progress that has been made since his original revelations, because he is still in Russia and there’s a lot of tension.”