CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a secret trip to Moscow this week specifically to warn Russia against attacking NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit — a trip President Trump publicly dismissed as merely "semi-routine."
The trip was first reported on Tuesday, despite Kremlin denials that any talks were going on.
The visit, whose purpose is now confirmed by the Wall Street Journal, marks Ratcliffe's first publicly known trip to the Russian capital and comes on the heels of fresh U.S. intelligence assessments warning that Vladimir Putin could test NATO's resolve with a limited strike on an allied country, likely a Baltic nation, sometime in the next few years. Officials are worried Putin, boxed in by the war in Ukraine and facing domestic pressure, could launch anything from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion.
Complicating matters further, U.S. weapons stockpiles have been stretched thin by both Ukraine transfers since Russia's 2022 invasion and the ongoing war with Iran, potentially factoring into Putin's calculus about how the West would actually respond to an attack.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Ratcliffe met with Russian intelligence officials during the trip, though not directly with Putin, who Peskov said was briefed on the discussions afterward.
Trump offered little clarity when asked about the visit during a Wednesday interview with radio host Glenn Beck, quickly pivoting to talk about ending the Russia-Ukraine war instead.
"Something may come out of it," Trump said. "We're working very hard to get that war ended, and frankly they both want to see it ended at this point."
Ratcliffe's trip follows several previous visits to Moscow by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff amid ongoing peace negotiations, but international visits by a sitting CIA director are notably rare. The last time an agency chief traveled to Moscow was November 2021, when then-Director William Burns delivered his own warning to Putin not to invade Ukraine — a warning that ultimately went unheeded just months later.