Several hours into Vladimir Putin's televised call-in show, one of the TV anchors interrupted viewers' questions to air a message from Edward Snowden asking the President whether or not Russia stored, intercepted, or analyzed individuals communications, according to Reuters.

Snowden, who leaked a vast trove of material from the super-secret National Security Agency, was granted asylum in Russia last year, Reuters reported. Thursday's show was completely pre-planned and Snowden's appearance was no surprise to Putin.

"I've seen little public discussion of Russia's own involvement in the policies of mass surveillance," Snowden said, according to Reuters. "Does Russia intercept, store, or analyze the communications of millions of individuals?"

"You're a former agent and I used to work in intelligence," Putin said in response to Snowden's question, Reuters reported. "Special services here, thank God, are under the strict control of the government, society, and their operations are regulated by law."

Snowden's virtual appearance on the show was the first known direct contact between Putin and Snowden since Russia gave him asylum last summer after he disclosed widespread monitoring of telephone and internet data by the United States and fled the country, according to Reuters.

In recent months, Russia's Internet regulatory body has shut down the domain of leading opposition figure and popular blogger Alexei Navalny, contradicting Putin's answer, according to Reuters.

Russia has also moved to block groups on Russia's leading social network, VKontakte, that were connected to the Ukrainian protest movement that helped oust the country's Kremlin-friendly president from power, Reuters reported.

Pavel Durov, VKontakte's founder, posted online one day before the television show aired what appeared to be FSB documents requesting personal information from the accounts of 39 groups, all of them linked to the Ukrainian protest movement, according to Reuters.