CIA Chief Flies to Moscow Unannounced — Trump Says “Something May Come Out of It”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow on Tuesday aboard a U.S. military C-17 for talks with Russian intelligence officials, the first known visit by a sitting CIA director since William Burns met Vladimir Putin in November 2021. The trip was not announced in advance. Flight-tracking data showed the aircraft arriving at Vnukovo and departing about eight and a half hours later.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the meetings Wednesday. Ratcliffe did not see Putin. “There were contacts with the intelligence services,” Peskov said. “There have been no meetings with the Russian president.” Putin was briefed immediately. Peskov called intelligence-channel contacts a “positive process” even in a “profound crisis” in bilateral relations, and said it was too early to judge any effect.

President Trump, asked on the Glenn Beck Program about speculation that Ratcliffe had gone to warn Moscow against testing NATO or to discuss Iran sanctions, said “none of the above.” He described the visit as “very sort of semi-routine,” added that he hated “to disappoint people,” and tied it to Ukraine: “We would like to see the war with Ukraine end. Now something may come out of it. We’re working very hard to get that war ended.” He said both sides want the war finished.

U.S. officials asked Ukraine to pause drone and missile strikes on Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other northern Russian cities from Monday through Wednesday while a senior American official was in the country, according to people familiar with the request and a senior Ukrainian official. Kyiv was told a senior U.S. official would be traveling in Russia. The CIA, Pentagon, and White House declined operational comment before Trump spoke.

The last comparable CIA-director visit to Moscow was Burns’s 2021 trip, three months before the full-scale invasion. Special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner flew to Russia earlier this year for Ukraine talks. Ratcliffe’s stop is the highest-level intelligence contact since then. No readout of the substance has been released. Trump framed it as back-channel work toward ending the Ukraine war, not a NATO warning or an Iran-sanctions mission. Whether “something comes out of it” will be measured in the weeks ahead, not in Tuesday’s flight path.