WASHINGTON — CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow on Tuesday for previously undisclosed meetings with Russian intelligence officials, the Kremlin confirmed Wednesday, in what appears to be the highest-ranking known U.S. official visit to Russia of President Trump's second term.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Ratcliffe met his Russian counterparts and that President Vladimir Putin was briefed on the talks but did not attend. Peskov said it was too soon to say whether the meeting could pull bilateral relations out of what he called a "deep crisis" more than four years into Russia's war on Ukraine.
The trip lands with U.S.-mediated peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv stalled, U.S. intelligence assessments describing a shift in Putin's willingness to test NATO with deniable operations, and two working channels — hostage negotiation and quiet diplomacy — that Ratcliffe has personally run since taking over the agency.
The flight
A U.S. Air Force C-17A Globemaster III transport plane departed Riga, Latvia, at 05:50 GMT and landed at Moscow's Vnukovo airport at 07:04 GMT, according to FlightRadar24 data cited by BBC News. The plane returned to Riga shortly before 17:00 GMT the same day. Social-media footage showed a diplomatic motorcade moving through the capital.
Neither the CIA, the White House nor the Pentagon commented on the trip. CBS News, which first reported the visit, said Ratcliffe has maintained contact with Russian intelligence counterparts during his tenure. It was his first known trip to Russia as director and the first known Moscow visit by a CIA chief since William Burns traveled there in November 2021 to warn Putin against invading Ukraine.
The Ukraine call
Ahead of the trip, U.S. officials informed the Ukrainian government that a senior delegation would be traveling to Moscow and asked Kyiv to suspend strikes on Russian territory until the delegation had departed, a senior Ukrainian official told CBS News. Peskov did not name the Russian officials Ratcliffe met.
Reuters, citing Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova, reported that Moscow and Kyiv exchanged 10 prisoners of war each in Belarus on Wednesday, a smaller handover than the multi-hundred swaps of the past year. It was not immediately clear whether the CIA had any role.
The read
Ratcliffe personally negotiated the April 2025 release of U.S.-Russian dual national Ksenia Karelina, and the CIA was involved in the 2024 exchange that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Marine veteran Paul Whelan. John Foreman, a British military attaché in Moscow from 2019 to 2022, told BBC Radio 4's PM program that Tuesday's trip could concern additional detainees or focus on "escalation management" amid speculation that recent drone incursions in Germany may be linked to Russia. "The Americans don't normally send such a high ranking official to Moscow unannounced at short notice unless something is up," Foreman said.
The account of the meeting as of Wednesday morning came entirely from Moscow. The White House, the CIA and the State Department had not publicly described the agenda or the outcome, and no Trump administration official had confirmed the visit on the record. Recent U.S. intelligence assessments described to CBS News indicate Putin may be increasingly willing to authorize provocative actions against NATO members short of conventional military attack — the backdrop against which the trip took place.
Trump met Putin at a summit in Alaska last year that did not produce a breakthrough on Ukraine. Peskov did not indicate whether follow-on contacts are planned.