CIA director's secretive visit to Moscow stirs mystery

CIA Director John Ratcliffe was in Moscow on Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said, for a rare visit by a U.S. spy agency chief as Russia slogs through its fifth year of war in Ukraine.

U.S. officials had not announced Ratcliffe's trip, but publicly available flight tracking data captured the movement of a U.S. government transport plane from Joint Base Andrews on the outskirts of Washington to the Russian capital. The aircraft departed Moscow about eight and a half hours later, tracking data from Flightradar24 shows.

Spokespeople for the CIA, the Pentagon and the U.S. Air Force declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Those familiar with Ratcliffe's trip to Russia spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the visit.

It was not immediately clear what the trip's purpose was or whether any other senior U.S. officials were part of the U.S. delegation.

Ratcliffe's visit to Moscow coincided with a fraught period in U.S.-Russia relations. Russia and Ukraine have stepped-up long-range strikes on each other's territory with no end to the war in sight. Some analysts have warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin might escalate with military probes against Europe's Baltic countries or other NATO members, which could precipitate a new crisis.

The two superpowers are on opposite sides of the Iran conflict. Iran is Moscow's most important ally in the Middle East, and Russia has provided Tehran targeting intelligence on the location of U.S. military assets in the region. The U.S. Treasury on Monday unveiled a sweeping campaign of sanctions and diplomatic pressure meant to asphyxiate Iran's economy.

On Wednesday morning, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a briefing that Ratcliffe did not meet with Putin and that the contacts were conducted "through intelligence-service channels." He did not expand on the purpose of the visit.

When asked whether Moscow believes the visit by such a high-ranking U.S. official might have a positive impact on Russian-American relations, Peskov said it would be "premature" to draw such a conclusion.

"Contacts through intelligence-service channels are in themselves a positive phenomenon, a positive process. These contacts often continue even in the most difficult moments of bilateral relations," Peskov said.

"But whether this will affect, on the whole, the process of bringing our bilateral relations out of the deep crisis they are in - it's premature to say at this point," he added.

Ratcliffe's visit was reported previously by CBS News.

The last known visit by a CIA director to Moscow was in November 2021, when William J. Burns, who led the agency under President Joe Biden, warned Putin and his top aides not to attack Ukraine and spelled out what the consequences would be. Moscow launched its full-scale invasion within weeks.

Ratcliffe's visit to Moscow came as Ukrainian long-range strikes into Russia, including the capital, have targeted energy infrastructure and online retail facilities, unnerving the population. Russia also has stepped up drone and missile strikes on Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, and elsewhere, exploiting shortfalls of air-defense resources.

President Donald Trump, at a NATO summit in Turkey in July, appeared to grant Ukraine's long-standing request that it be able to produce U.S.-designed Patriot air-defense missiles on its soil. He later backed away from that promise.

The U.S. aircraft that arrived in Moscow, a C-17A Globemaster III, is the Defense Department's workhorse heavy transport plane. The airframe is especially valuable for sensitive diplomatic visits, allowing leaders to bring a tailored suite of specialized vehicles, electronic equipment and support personnel.

The C-17A departed from Joint Base Andrews on Sunday evening, bound for Riga, Latvia, according to tracking data from Flightradar24. The plane appeared to stay in Latvia for a 24-hour layover before departing for Moscow on Tuesday morning, landing shortly after 9 a.m.

A second U.S. Air Force plane, a C-40B, also took off from Joint Base Andrews and landed in Riga several hours after the C-17A's arrival in the country.

Publicly available flight tracking data does not show the C-40B on the next flight to Moscow. The aircraft is a modified business jet used to transport senior government officials.

A video shared on social media Tuesday and geolocated by The Washington Post showed a motorcade of cars, some with red diplomatic plates, driving east on New Arbat Avenue in central Moscow near a Russian armed forces building.

The C-17A took off from Moscow shortly after 5:30 p.m. local time and landed in Riga a little more than an hour later, data from Flightradar24 shows.

Mary Ilyushina, Natalia Abbakumova and Catherine Belton contributed to this report.