Politico, WSJ: CIA director visited Moscow to warn Kremlin against attacking NATO countries

CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow to warn Russian officials against attacking NATO member states, particularly Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, according to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal and Politico.

Neither outlet specified who Ratcliffe met with in Moscow.

The ”meeting was primarily to warn Russia against any escalatory action against the Baltic states,” one of Politico’s sources said.

Ratcliffe also demanded that Moscow halt its military and economic support for Iran, according to a Politico source.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced visit to Moscow on August 25, arriving aboard a U.S. Air Force Boeing C-17 military transport plane that landed at Vnukovo airport that morning. The aircraft that had brought him flew back out of Moscow around 7 p.m.

The Kremlin stated that Ratcliffe had come for “contacts between security services” and had not met with Vladimir Putin. U.S. President Donald Trump said the CIA director’s trip to Moscow was for some “semi-routine” reason, dismissing the idea that Ratcliffe had been sent to Russia because Putin is planning to “test NATO resolve.”

The Wall Street Journal reported in early August that, according to U.S. intelligence assessments, Putin could try to “test NATO’s resolve” within the next few years by launching a limited attack on a member state of the alliance. American officials believe the goal of such an attack would be to split NATO.