Secret Moscow trip: CIA director urged Kremlin to choose peace, NYT says
Photo: CIA Director made clandestine Moscow visit for talks (Getty Images)
CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a clandestine trip to Moscow to privately deliver a bleak assessment of Russia's faltering war effort in Ukraine and press the Kremlin into a negotiated settlement before its position deteriorates further, reports The New York Times.
Recipient
Ratcliffe personally met with Aleksandr Bortnikov, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), without issuing any threats of repercussions for Moscow should Putin ignore the CIA director's assessment and opt to prolong the war.
CIA analysts have long harbored doubts about whether Putin is receiving a candid accounting of the war's trajectory and its mounting toll from his inner circle.
Parallel channels
Ratcliffe's line of communication with Bortnikov runs alongside separate back channels that Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have already opened with other Putin aides.
Some officials hope that Putinб himself, a former intelligence officeкб will view a message delivered directly by the CIA director as more pressing and credible than overtures conveyed through routine diplomatic avenues.
Why now
For much of the past year, Trump and a circle of his advisers appeared to view a Russian battlefield victory as all but inevitable, given the country's overwhelming demographic advantage. Yet Russia has sustained staggering losses, and its forward momentum along the front has ground to a virtual halt.
Citing that grim military and economic calculus, Ratcliffe told Bortnikov that he believed the time had come for serious negotiations to bring the war to an end.
Ratcliffe's public stance
The CIA director's private overture largely tracked with his public remarks. Last month, Ratcliffe spoke openly about Russia's mounting troop attrition and its inability to make headway on the battlefield, noting that the life expectancy of a Russian soldier deployed to the front line now stands at less than thirty-five minutes.
Over the eighteen months of his tenure at the agency's helm, he observed, Russia has managed to seize barely one percent of Ukrainian territory - a shortfall he attributed squarely to Ukraine's "mastery" of drone technology.
Ahead of his sit-down with Bortnikov, Ratcliffe consulted with his Ukrainian counterparts, assuring them that his objective was to gauge Moscow's position, not to negotiate concessions on Kyiv's behalf.
Why a window for peace may be opening now
European diplomats believe the coming winter could offer a window of opportunity for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, given that Moscow's offensive in the Donbas has largely ground to a halt and Kyiv retains the capacity to exact a punishing toll on Russian forces through drone warfare.
Some European officials are pressing the Trump administration to augment the negotiating team with a national security official capable of delivering messages as unvarnished as the one Ratcliffe conveyed.
Ukrainians have long regarded Witkoff and Kushner as too favorably disposed toward Moscow, whereas Ratcliffe - a longstanding hawk on Russia - is viewed as a potentially more impartial intermediary.
Ratcliffe's role as Trump's envoy
Trump has repeatedly turned to Ratcliffe as a discrete messenger. In January, he became the first cabinet-level official to visit Venezuela following the capture of President Nicolás Maduro by US special forces.
In May, he traveled to Cuba, where he delivered a bleak assessment of the island's economic health against the backdrop of the US oil embargo, urging sweeping political and economic overhauls.
History of direct intelligence channels
Direct contacts between the heads of US and Russian intelligence have been infrequent in recent years. In November 2021, William Burns, then the CIA director, met personally in Moscow with Bortnikov and other senior officials, warning Putin against embarking on a full-scale invasion.
A year later, in November 2022, Turkey hosted a meeting between Burns and Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's foreign intelligence service (SVR) - at a time when US intelligence had intercepted communications about Moscow's potential use of nuclear weapons to slow Ukraine's counteroffensive. Burns cautioned that any such move would carry severe consequences. No second face-to-face encounter ever materialised.
Following Trump's return to power last year, Ratcliffe and Bortnikov coordinated the logistics of a prisoner swap, although their recent meeting in Moscow marked their first in-person talks.
RBC-Ukraine has previously reported on Ratcliffe's visit to the Russian capital. The CIA director travelled to Moscow on August 25; Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later disclosed details of Ratcliffe's negotiations with Russian security services.
Subsequently, SVR chief Naryshkin confirmed the meeting with the CIA director, stating that they had addressed matters falling within the remit of their respective intelligence agencies. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate, added that the war in Ukraine featured among the topics broached during Ratcliffe's trip to Moscow.
