The CIA director’s high-stakes mission to Moscow could be an ominous sign of darker days to come, according to the Daily Beast’s resident Russia expert.
The diplomatic scramble burst into full public view after the agency’s director, John Ratcliffe, quietly touched down in the Russian capital earlier this week, reportedly for a high-level intervention.
While President Donald Trump attempted to wave off the secret flight as merely “semi-routine,” insiders warn the rare visit was triggered by mounting intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin is considering direct strikes against NATO allies, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
“I think we should be worried,” Daily Beast news editor Allison Quinn declared in a video for the Daily Beast Substack. Quinn, who spent nearly a decade in Moscow and Kyiv reporting on human trafficking, corruption, Russia’s opposition, and the war in eastern Ukraine, pointed to a flurry of suspicious activity unfolding in real time.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko made an unannounced trip to Moscow on Thursday to hold talks with Putin this weekend. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the Saturday talks, claiming the two leaders would discuss bilateral cooperation, security matters, and pressing international issues.
“Once again, saying, ‘Oh, it’s just a working visit. Nothing to see here.’ The timing is a little bit suspect, I would say,” Quinn said. “Right after John Ratcliffe left, now we have Lukashenko going to Moscow, so something is up.”
Adding to the eerie atmosphere, Russia’s infamous “Buzzer”—the Soviet-era shortwave radio station known as UVB-76 that broadcasts a monotonous buzzing sound on 4625 kHz—set a record by blasting out 25 encrypted coded messages. The station, widely believed to be controlled by the Russian military for spy communications, rarely sees such spikes unless major operations are imminent.
“Nobody knows what it means,” Quinn said. “But we know that in the past when the activity has kind of shot up, it’s usually been prior to something big happening or after something big already happened.”
Official explanations for the secret visit from both Washington and Moscow have only heightened suspicion. Ratcliffe’s Russian counterpart also insisted the meeting was routine.
“That doesn’t make sense. That does not check out at all,” Quinn stressed, noting reported intelligence that Ratcliffe traveled to dissuade Putin from attacking a NATO country or deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. “He’s backed into a corner, he’s desperate, he can’t go backwards, he has to do something drastic.”
The administration’s attempt to downplay the crisis stands in stark contrast to the Kremlin’s escalating threats. Moscow warned it could strike British military targets over London’s support for Ukraine, with Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accusing Britain and France of “playing with fire” by supplying sensitive missile technology to Kyiv.
Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, an armed attack on one member requires a collective defense response.
“You’re potentially talking about literally the start of World War III,” Hines warned, with Quinn adding that Trump’s own public posturing may have invited the danger. “I don’t think Putin would even be considering it if we did not have a president constantly berating NATO and saying how useless it is.”
Meanwhile, Ratcliffe also warned Moscow against providing military support to Iran or overreacting to U.S. economic sanctions.
