The worrying reason CIA Director John Ratcliffe took a secret trip to Russia has been revealed.
Speculation has run rampant after a U.S. military transport aircraft unexpectedly landed at a Moscow airport. It was later revealed that Ratcliffe was traveling aboard the Boeing C-17A Globemaster III in what was the CIA chief’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital.
Insiders have now told The Wall Street Journal that Ratcliffe’s trip on Tuesday was to warn Russia not to launch an unprovoked attack on NATO countries.
There have been fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has faced multiple humiliations as Ukraine continues to resist Russia’s invasion, could lash out by carrying out an attack ranging from a cyberattack to an incursion into a neighboring country in order to test NATO’s resolve in the coming years.
Any scenario in which Putin attacks a member of the military alliance could have devastating consequences around the world.
Under NATO’s Article 5, an attack against one NATO country is considered an attack against all 32 allied members.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to reporters on Wednesday that Ratcliffe held talks with Russian intelligence officials during his visit, but said the CIA director did not meet with Putin.
“All I can tell you is that there have been contacts via the security services. I can tell you that there have been no meetings with the Russian president. Naturally, President Putin is kept informed of everything without delay,” Peskov said.
U.S. officials previously told the Journal that it had long been assumed Putin would not provoke NATO while he was still fighting Ukraine—a conflict that has now dragged into its fifth year.
However, this assessment changed earlier this year when Kyiv began fighting back with wave after wave of drone attacks that put Moscow on the back foot.
This includes targeting Russia’s major oil refineries, which play a key role in funding the invasion, as well as warehouses and facilities used by Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, to cripple Moscow’s economy.
It is also believed that the U.S.’s dwindling stockpiles of munitions amid Trump’s war in Iran could influence whether Putin decides to attack a NATO country. The U.S. has also been a major supplier of weapons and munitions to Ukraine as it supports its bid to fight off the Russian invasion.
It remains to be seen how successful Ratcliffe’s trip to the Russian capital will prove to be.
William Burns, who led the CIA under former President Joe Biden, was the last known intelligence agency head to visit Moscow, heading there in November 2021. Burns’ trip was to warn Putin not to attack Ukraine, which the Russian president did three months later.
Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Putin would be hoping to fracture the NATO alliance with an aggressive move against one of its member states.
“The question mark is how the United States would respond in that case,” Conley told the Journal. “It has always been a goal [of Russia’s] to challenge the credibility of NATO and to separate the United States from its allies.”
Kremlin spokesperson Peskov tried to frame Ratcliffe’s visit as positive, saying talks between U.S. and Russian intelligence agencies could help repair the poor diplomatic relations between the two countries.
“These contacts often continue even during the most difficult periods in bilateral relations. Our president, incidentally, has spoken about this. However, it is still too early to say to what extent this will, overall, help to steer our bilateral relations out of the profound crisis in which they currently find themselves,” he said.
President Donald Trump downplayed the significance of Ratcliffe’s Moscow visit during an interview on Glenn Beck’s radio show Wednesday.
“He’s there on, you know, very sort of semi-routine. I hate to disappoint people,” Trump said. “John Ratcliffe is a fantastic guy. He’s the head of the CIA, and he is not in there for any of the things that you said. Now something may come out, you know, out of it. We’re working very hard to get that war ended.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the CIA for comment.
