Trump hints at outcome from CIA chief’s surprise Moscow trip

US President Donald Trump said something may come out of an unannounced meeting his CIA director held with Russian intelligence officials in Moscow on Tuesday, fueling speculation about the purpose of the trip amid stalled efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew into Moscow aboard a military aircraft and departed just hours later, and neither Trump nor US officials disclosed what the two sides discussed. Trump described the meeting as semi routine and said Washington wants to see the war in Ukraine come to an end. The last comparable high level contact between the two countries occurred in the months before Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine began.

The Kremlin said Ratcliffe did not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit. Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters that contacts took place with Russian intelligence services but that no meeting occurred with Putin himself, adding that the president receives immediate briefings on all such matters. Peskov made the remarks in response to a question from a reporter with a Russian state affiliated newspaper, who asked whether Putin had been informed of the talks and at what level they took place.

When the BBC’s Russia editor asked Peskov what topics the CIA discussions covered, he said he had nothing further to add beyond his earlier comments. He also said it remains too early to determine what effect the meeting might have on repairing the deeply strained relationship between Washington and Moscow, calling any assessment of the broader recovery process premature at this stage. Peskov described intelligence contacts between the two countries as a positive development, noting that such channels often remain open even during the most difficult periods in bilateral relations.

Ahead of the visit, US officials informed Ukraine that a senior American delegation would travel to Moscow and asked Kyiv to pause strikes until the delegation had departed, according to a senior Ukrainian official who spoke to another news organization. Neither the CIA, the White House nor the Pentagon has issued an official statement addressing Ratcliffe’s trip.

Ratcliffe now ranks among the highest level American officials to visit Russia during Trump’s second term in office. The last time a sitting CIA director traveled to Moscow was in November 2021, when then director William Burns warned Russian officials against sending troops into Ukraine. Weeks after that visit, the Kremlin launched its full scale invasion of the country.

Since the invasion began, the United States has maintained a strained relationship with Russia, which has faced international isolation and sweeping economic sanctions. Trump met with Putin at a summit in Alaska last year, though the talks failed to produce any major breakthrough, and subsequent peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine led by the United States appear to have stalled since then.

John Foreman, who served as Britain’s military attache in Moscow between 2019 and 2022, told a radio program that American officials rarely send such a senior figure to Moscow unannounced and on short notice unless a significant development is underway.

The unannounced nature of Ratcliffe’s visit, combined with the lack of official confirmation from Washington, has left analysts and diplomats speculating about whether the trip signals renewed backchannel efforts to break the deadlock in the Ukraine peace process, though officials on both sides have offered little indication of what practical outcome, if any, the meeting might produce.