CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Moscow for contacts between US and Russian intelligence services but did not meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“Contacts with Putin were not planned,” Peskov told Russian state news agency TASS on Wednesday, adding in comments to The Washington Post that Ratcliffe had visited Moscow for “contacts between special services.”
Peskov declined to provide further details about the visit.
A plane carrying Ratcliffe unexpectedly landed at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport on Tuesday. A motorcade with US diplomatic plates was subsequently seen traveling through the Russian capital.
The Kremlin initially said it had no information about the arrival of the US aircraft, prompting speculation about its purpose.
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ratcliffe’s trip could have been linked to US intelligence about Russia’s future plans, including military preparations for mobilization and potential attempts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to test NATO’s resolve.
“The goal could have been to say: ‘We know what you are planning, and you better not do it,’” former US Deputy Director of National Intelligence Beth Sanner told the newspaper.
The visit could also have been related to a potential ceasefire in Iran or the possible inclusion of additional parties in negotiations, according to Sanner.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian media reported that Ratcliffe’s visit could have involved discussions on a possible Russian-Ukrainian moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure and ports, as well as a potential ceasefire in the Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts as steps toward broader de-escalation.
Preparations for visit
Washington asked Kyiv to temporarily halt strikes on Moscow and St. Petersburg during CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s visit to Russia, a request confirmed by Ukrainian officials to multiple media outlets.
Following the visit, Ratcliffe’s aircraft left Vnukovo at around 6:50 p.m. Moscow time and flew toward Latvia, according to data cited by Kommersant from Flightradar.
Ratcliffe became CIA director on Jan. 23, 2025 after previously serving as the US director of national intelligence from May 2020 to January 2021.
His predecessor at the CIA, William Burns, visited Moscow in November 2021 and met with Russian officials, including then-Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergei Naryshkin, and spoke with Putin by phone. At the time, CNN reported that the discussions focused on Russian troop movements near Ukraine ahead of the full-scale invasion.