The Kremlin says the CIA director held talks in Moscow with his intelligence counterparts

The Kremlin said Wednesday that CIA Director John Ratcliffe held talks in Moscow with his intelligence counterparts, a rare and secretive visit at a time when relations with Washington remain strained over Russia's war in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ratcliffe did not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was informed of the contacts that were "on the intelligence agencies’ level.” “Of course, President Putin is immediately informed of everything,” Peskov added, refusing to say what was discussed. The CIA declined to comment, and there was no immediate comment from the White House.

Russian state news agencies reported that a U.S. military plane landed in Moscow's Vnukovo airport on Tuesday and departed later that day. A senior Ukrainian official told The that Washington informed Kyiv a delegation would be traveling to the Russian capital and asked it to suspend strikes until it left. The official said the request did not apply to all Russian territory, but specifically to Moscow, St.

Petersburg and some northern regions. Strikes on other parts of Russia continued, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk publicly. Kremlin says US-Russia relations are in a ‘profound crisis’ Peskov said that “contacts between intelligence agencies are, in and of themselves, a positive phenomenon, a positive process,” but he stressed that Russia-U.S. relations remain in a “profound crisis.” He added that it was “too early to say” what impact Ratcliffe's visit would have on the ties between the two countries.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s security services, told AP that visits like the one by Ratcliffe do not “happen every year.” Official channels of communication between Moscow and Washington have been kept alive since the 1980s and exist so both sides can talk if American or Russian lives are in danger or for other reasons, Soldatov said. In 2021, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Putin’s Security Council, met CIA Director William Burns in Moscow months before Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Burns later met Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, in Turkey in November 2022 to warn Russia not to deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

Details of Tuesday’s discussions have not been revealed but such meetings normally take place only when there is a matter of pressing national security and when it is in “American national interests,” Soldatov said. Russia-U.S. relations sank to Cold War lows after Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but appeared to warm after President Donald Trump returned to office. He had promised to end the war swiftly, holding multiple phone calls with Putin and even hosting him in Alaska a year ago.

The efforts to negotiate a peace deal have largely stalled since then, however, with U.S. attention turning to its war with Iran and both Moscow and Kyiv stepping up their long-range attacks on each other. Putin has rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's push for an immediate ceasefire, arguing that Russia wants a comprehensive settlement, not a temporary truce. Russia has proposed to mediate in the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran, Moscow's important ally in the Middle East.