CIA Director John Ratcliffe – who visited Russia two weeks ago in his first trip to Moscow during his tenure – may be preparing to take a more prominent role in US-led talks with Russia and Ukraine regarding the war, now in its fifth year.
The possible change would reduce the involvement of senior US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, while Ratcliffe would also continue to work with intelligence services in both countries, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Wednesday, Sept. 9, citing five sources familiar with the matter.
“This entire story is totally fake news… None of these supposed conversations are happening,” the White House said in a statement, according to the FT.
“Special envoy Witkoff and Jared Kushner continue to work incredibly hard toward a peace agreement, and the President trusts them fully to lead negotiations on behalf of the United States.”
While the CIA declined the request to comment, sources told the FT that Trump had not yet made a final decision.
No final decision has been made
According to the FT’s sources, the US administration has considered changing its negotiating team after previous efforts to broker an end to Russia’s war in late February.
Witkoff could retain his broader special-envoy portfolio, including work on Middle East conflicts, while also remaining involved in diplomacy related to Ukraine – alongside Ratcliffe.
The sources also described internal disagreement over how responsibility for negotiations would be divided.
According to the FT, Ukraine felt that Witkoff had not done enough to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into changing his demands, while Russia believed he shared blame for not achieving a breakthrough during Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska on Aug. 15, 2025.
Another reason for a possible change in the team could be the lack of progress in recent diplomatic efforts, as Putin maintains his core demands.
In July, Bloomberg reported that the Kremlin no longer planned to return any occupied Ukrainian territory as part of a future peace deal. Instead, Russia plans to keep the occupied areas of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions as permanent buffer zones, while continuing its push to seize all of the Donetsk region, according to three people familiar with the Kremlin’s thinking.
Ratcliffe’s unexpected visit to Moscow
Ratcliffe arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport on Aug. 25, flying in from Riga, Latvia, raising questions about the flight’s unusual route.
At the time, it was not known which official had arrived in Russia via the US government aircraft – identified as RCH4555 – as neither Moscow nor Washington commented on the purpose of the visit.
However, flight-tracking data indicated that the aircraft first arrived in Riga on Sunday, Aug. 23, after departing from Camp Springs, Maryland, home to Andrews Air Force Base, prompting speculation.
“We have no information about this,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said when asked about the aircraft, adding that Russia was not planning meetings with the US administration. The Kremlin later confirmed Ratcliffe’s visit, saying that he held talks with senior Russian intelligence officials, but did not meet Putin.
Russia’s foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin also confirmed that he met Ratcliffe during the visit, describing the talks as a working-level meeting.
Although Trump downplayed the visit by calling it “semi-routine,” he noted that his administration was “working very hard to get that war ended.”
Several media outlets, including Axios and Suspilne, reported that Washington had asked Ukraine to refrain from strikes on both Moscow and St. Petersburg ahead of Ratcliffe’s visit.
According to Politico on Aug. 26, Ratcliffe warned Putin against attacking a NATO member, with the discussion centering on the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Putin was reportedly also warned against providing military and economic support to Iran, which Moscow views as an ally and has received Shahed drones from.
Around the same time, The New York Times reported that Ratcliffe warned Russian intelligence officials that Moscow’s military and economic position would deteriorate further if the Kremlin refused to pursue serious peace negotiations.
Trump dismissed the possibility of Russia attacking NATO on Aug. 27, while rejecting reports that Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow to warn the Kremlin against such a move.
US envoys visit Kyiv, Moscow throughout the weekend
In their first visit to Ukraine as Washington’s intermediaries, Witkoff and Kushner traveled to Kyiv by train on Sunday, Sept. 6, where they held bilateral talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky and the American emissaries, followed by a multilateral session that included national security advisers from the UK, France, and Germany.
Witkoff and Kushner also visited Moscow and held more than three hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday evening, Sept. 5. Formal discussions were followed by an informal working dinner.
Despite the weekend meetings being described as substantial and productive, and despite the Kremlin signaling openness for further trilateral talks, Russia’s escalating strikes across Ukraine have raised doubts about whether the negotiations can deliver meaningful progress toward ending the war.