The US whistleblower Edward Snowden is in Moscow Airport and Russia will not extradite him, President Vladimir Putin has said.

Mr. Putin said the man behind the National Security Agency (NSA) leaks was in a transit area and had not crossed into the Russian border and is free to go anywhere.

Speaking during a visit to Finland, Mr. Putin said Russian security agencies "didn't work and aren't working" with Mr. Snowden.

He said the fact that Russia has no extradition agreement with the US meant it would not be meeting the American request for extradition.

However he said he is hoping Mr. Snowden will depart as quickly as possible and that the stopover at the airport will not affect bilateral ties.

Mr. Snowden claimed the NSA has been keeping details of millions of phone calls by Americans and monitoring the use by foreigners of internet sites including Google, Facebook and Yahoo under the PRISM programme.

The White House has expressed its unhappiness at Hong Kong's failure to handover their fugitive - they are especially annoyed that Snowden was allowed to travel on a cancelled passport. US government spokesperson Jay Carney has said that decision "...unquestionably has a negative impact on the US-China relationship."

US Secretary of State John Kerry has dubbed Snowden a traitor, and warned both Russia and China that their relations with the US might be damaged by their refusal to extradite him.

He is again appealing for Russian cooperation in the matter.