Washington Post: Ratcliffe secretly visited Moscow to warn Russia not to exploit perceived U.S. weakness from the Iran war, saying escalation in Ukraine would push Trump toward Zelensky

CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow on August 25 — the first trip to Russia by the head of a U.S. intelligence agency since the start of the full-scale war. The visit was not announced in advance and took place under heightened secrecy. Journalists spent several hours trying to determine who had landed in Moscow aboard a U.S. military transport plane, while the Kremlin insisted no meetings with U.S. administration officials were planned for that week.

Several days after the visit, Ratcliffe was still not known to have met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the trip was a matter of “communication through intelligence service channels.” According to Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), he and Ratcliffe “discussed a number of issues that fall within the purview of the intelligence services.” “The meeting took place,” Naryshkin said. “There’s nothing unusual about it.”

U.S. President Donald Trump struck the same note, calling Ratcliffe’s trip routine. Yet there has still been no official word from either Moscow or Washington on what Ratcliffe discussed with Russian officials.

Russian and foreign experts, for their part, consider the CIA director’s trip to Russia a highly unusual event. Citing senior, well-placed sources, Western outlets have offered their own explanations for why Ratcliffe went to Moscow.

Here are the leading theories:

• The Wall Street Journal and Politico: Ratcliffe went to Moscow to warn the Kremlin against attacking NATO countries — in particular Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. He also urged Russian authorities to scale back military and economic aid to Iran, which is at war with the United States.
• The New York Times: Ratcliffe met with Alexander Bortnikov, director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB); shared with him “his grim assessment” of Russia’s position in the war against Ukraine; and urged Moscow to open peace talks.
• The Washington Post: Ratcliffe went to Moscow because the Kremlin believes the conflict with Iran has left the United States “exhausted and unable to intervene” in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Sources cited by the paper said the point of the visit was to tell Russian officials that this is not the case, and that a major escalation of the conflict with Ukraine would “only push Trump toward Zelensky.”