Kremlin reveals why CIA chief visited Moscow

CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s unannounced trip to Moscow on Tuesday was for contact between the US and Russian security services, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

A US Air Force C-17A Globemaster III, identified by flight trackers as RCH4555, flew from Joint Base Andrews to Riga on Sunday evening before continuing on Tuesday to Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. Later that day, a motorcade with US diplomatic plates was spotted in central Moscow.

CBS News first reported that Ratcliffe was in Moscow for meetings, citing sources familiar with the situation. It was also not clear whether the visit – which ultimately lasted roughly eight hours – involved any other senior US officials.

Asked by the Washington Post on Wednesday about the purpose of Ratcliffe’s trip, Peskov said it was for “contacts between security services” and declined to give further details. Separately, Peskov told TASS that “contacts with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin were not planned.”

Speaking to reporters later on Wednesday, Peskov said Putin had been kept in the loop about the talks, calling engagement between the special services “a positive phenomenon.” However, he cautioned that it is “too early to say” whether the talks “will affect the overall process of bringing our bilateral relations out of the deep crisis.”

Media reports have floated several possible subjects of the secretive talks, including detainee negotiations, the Ukraine peace process, the Iran conflict, and broader questions of strategic stability.

The last publicly disclosed contact between Ratcliffe and top Russian officials took place in March 2025, when the CIA director spoke by phone with Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief Sergey Naryshkin. At the time, the SVR said Russia and the US agreed to maintain dialogue in order to “promote international stability and security, as well as to reduce tensions in relations between Moscow and Washington.”

Ratcliffe’s visit was the first known trip to Moscow by a CIA director since William Burns traveled there in November 2021, several months before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. The last publicly known face-to-face meeting between the heads of the CIA and Russia’s SVR before Ratcliffe’s trip was in Ankara in November 2022, when Burns met Naryshkin to discuss nuclear escalation risks and detained US citizens.