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Ratcliffe in Moscow
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The unannounced flight of CIA Director John Radcliffe has stirred up a lot of fervid speculation over the reasons for the trip.
The latest comes mainly from the Wall Street Journal and Politico, the former of which declaring that “the surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.”
The trip “followed new U.S. intelligence assessments, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that Russian president Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an Allied country in the next few years,” the paper added.
Politico also cited two anonymous “people familiar with the matter” as saying Ratcliffe “warned Russian officials in Moscow this week not to escalate conflict with America’s NATO allies, in particular Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, in response to Moscow’s stalemated invasion of Ukraine.”
It added that Ratcliffe also used the trip to “press Russia to reduce military and economic support for Iran, according to one of those two people and a U.K. official with knowledge of the trip.”
Russia has reportedly aided Iran with satellite intelligence for its missile launches against U.S. and allied targets in the Middle East.
As controversy over the trip mounted Wednesday, President Trump said it was “sort of semi-routine, adding. “I hate to disappoint people…”
The Washington Post discovered Ratcliffe’s secret trip to Moscow by analyzing publicly available flight‑tracking data and geolocating social‑media video of a U.S. diplomatic motorcade in central Moscow.
The Kremlin on Wednesday confirmed that Ratcliffe “held talks in Moscow with his intelligence counterparts, a rare and secretive visit at a time when relations with Washington remain strained over Russia’s war in Ukraine.“
The last time a CIA director visited Moscow was in November 2021, when Bill Burns flew there with a direct warning for President Vladimir Putin not to invade Ukraine.
Ratcliffe did not get a meeting with Putin, all parties agreed. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ratcliffe’s meetings were “on the intelligence agencies’ level” but that, “Of course, President Putin is immediately informed of everything.” Peskov refused to say publicly what was discussed.
Ratcliffe meeting with Cuban oficials in Havana in May (CIA photo)Garry Kasparov, the retired former world chess champion and Putin opponent in exile, said on X that Putin’s decision to wave off a meeting with the CIA chief “shows how little Putin believes in any intel, pressure, warning, or anything else from the U.S. He can just pick up the phone and call Trump and everything goes his way.”
VChK-OGPU, an opposition group that takes its name from two Soviet-era secret police organs, identified the men Ratcliffe met with as two senior FSB officials, Ivan Tkachev, head of the FSB’s Third Service (Military Counterintelligence Department), and Alexei Komkov, head of the Fifth Service, “who are both directly involved in Russia’s war against Ukraine,” according to NEXTA, an exile Belarus news and information service based in Poland.
“A potential meeting with Putin was allegedly supposed to take place only if those talks went well — and, apparently, it never happened,” it said.
“Of course, President Putin is immediately informed of everything,” Peskov said.
Former senior CIA operations official and Russia hand John Sipher said perhaps too much was being made of the trip.
“We always maintain liaison relationships with bad actors like the Russians,” he told SpyTalk. “Ratcliffe even flew off to Cuba recently.”
Then again, there’s long been suspicions about Donald Trump’s friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, which gained steam at a 2018 summit in Helsinki when the president notoriously took the Russian’s side over U.S. intelligence on the question of Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election. The administration has regularly appeared to tilt toward Russia on talks over Ukraine, but Trump is said to be running out of patience with Putin.
“Of course, the Administration is so awful, it is hard to guess the reason for the trip,” said Sipher. “It could be a message seeking help with Iran and the [Hormuz] Strait. It could be to warn about activities in Europe, or it could be an attempt to jump start some sort of discussions re Ukraine. These Bozos may even be offering to let more Russian diplomats back into the country in return for some small favor.”
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