CIA Director John Ratcliffe met Russian foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin during an unannounced visit to Moscow this week, as conflicting accounts emerged over whether he carried a U.S. warning against any Russian move on NATO territory.
Naryshkin, who heads Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), confirmed on Aug. 27 that the two had held a “working-level meeting” and discussed unspecified sensitive matters within the remit of their agencies.
He said there was nothing unusual about the contact.
The visit first came to public attention after flight-tracking data showed a U.S. military C-17 transport aircraft flying from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to Latvia and then Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on Aug. 25.
The Kremlin later confirmed that Ratcliffe had met Russian intelligence officials. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin had been briefed on the talks but had not met the CIA director.
“Contacts through intelligence-service channels are in themselves a positive development, a positive process,” Peskov said.
He added that it was too early to assess whether the meeting would help improve broader relations between Moscow and Washington.
U.S. President Donald Trump described the trip as “semi-routine” during an interview with radio host Glenn Beck.
“We would like to see the war with Ukraine end,” Trump said, rejecting suggestions that Ratcliffe had traveled to Moscow over possible Russian action against NATO or to seek support for U.S. pressure on Iran.
The Wall Street Journal and CBS News, citing people briefed on the visit, reported that Ratcliffe had warned Moscow against attacking a NATO member.
Trump later told Axios that no such warning had been delivered and called the trip “standard business.”
The Kremlin also dismissed the reports as “scare stories.”
The speculation followed a Wall Street Journal report on U.S. intelligence assessments that Russian President Vladimir Putin could seek to test NATO’s resolve within the next few years through measures ranging from a cyberattack to a limited military incursion.
The available information was insufficient to conclude that Moscow had a specific plan to intervene in the Baltic states.
However, a limited or initially ambiguous security incident could test how quickly NATO members reach a common assessment and agree on a response under Article 5.
Ukraine and Iran were also cited in media reports as possible subjects of the Moscow meeting, but neither side has disclosed the agenda.
Ratcliffe is the first CIA director known to have visited Moscow since William Burns traveled there in November 2021, three months before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
