Frank Williams, Vilnius
CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced one-day trip to Moscow on Tuesday for talks with Russian security officials, people familiar with the matter said. The visit came as U.S. efforts to end the war in Ukraine remain stalled and Washington intensifies pressure on Iran.
Ratcliffe flew aboard a U.S. military C-17 that stopped in Riga, Latvia, before landing at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. He spent several hours on the ground and departed the same day. It was his first known visit to Moscow as CIA director and the first by a senior Trump administration official in months. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the contacts occurred at the level of the special services and that no meeting with President Vladimir Putin took place.
According to people familiar with the matter, Ratcliffe used the trip to warn Russia against staging any attack on NATO territory and to urge Moscow to cut off economic and military support for Iran. The visit followed by one day a new Treasury Department sanctions campaign aimed at isolating Tehran economically; Russia remains a key partner of Iran. U.S. officials also asked Ukraine to pause drone and missile strikes on Moscow and other northern Russian cities during the visit window.
American and European officials have grown increasingly concerned that Putin could test NATO with a limited incursion—potentially targeting the Baltic states or Poland—as the Ukraine war grinds on without resolution. Recent Western intelligence assessments outline possible scenarios ranging from cyberattacks to small-scale actions designed to challenge Article 5 without triggering a full allied response. Incidents in recent years include Russian drones violating Romanian and Polish airspace and an explosive-laden drone linked to Russian intelligence found at a German airport.
President Trump downplayed the risk of a Russian attack on NATO territory, saying his talks with Putin had assured him no such plan was in the works. He described Ratcliffe’s trip as “semi-routine” and focused on ending the Ukraine war, while declining to confirm the specific warnings.
Separately on Tuesday, the Vatican’s top diplomat, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow and called for an end to the war. “This war must end,” Gallagher said, urging genuine negotiations and respect for humanitarian law. It was the first in-person meeting between senior Vatican and Russian officials in five years.
