CIA Director John Ratcliffe travels to Moscow for unannounced meetings with Russian officials
CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Moscow on Tuesday for unannounced meetings with Russian officials, traveling aboard a US military transport plane after Washington asked Ukraine to pause regional strikes.
Flight to Vnukovo
Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe arrived in Moscow on Tuesday, 25 August, traveling aboard a United States Air Force Boeing C-17A Globemaster III transport aircraft. The aircraft departed Joint Base Andrews near Washington on Sunday, making a stopover in Riga, Latvia. On Tuesday morning, the plane took off from Riga at 05:50 GMT and landed at Moscow Vnukovo Airport at 07:04 GMT. A diplomatic convoy was subsequently observed moving through Moscow before the aircraft departed the Russian capital shortly before 16:00 GMT.
Prior to the trip, Washington notified authorities in Kyiv about the high-level delegation. The United States requested that Ukraine temporarily refrain from conducting strikes against Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and other northern Russian regions on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to facilitate the travel.
- US military aircraft departs Joint Base Andrews for Riga, Latvia
- Boeing C-17A aircraft departs Riga for Moscow
- US delegation arrives at Moscow Vnukovo Airport
- Aircraft departs Moscow Vnukovo Airport
Official reactions
Neither the United States government nor the Russian government officially announced the visit, and the CIA declined to comment on the travel. During a daily press briefing in Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov addressed the presence of the aircraft and inquiries regarding possible talks.
I did not have that information.
Peskov previously stated that the Kremlin had no meetings scheduled with representatives of the United States administration for the week. Ratcliffe is the highest-ranking official from Donald Trump's administration to visit Russia since January 2025, when Ratcliffe assumed the directorship of the intelligence agency.
Broader diplomatic context
The travel represents the first visit by a CIA director to the Russian capital since William Burns visited Moscow in November 2021. Burns held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin roughly three months before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The United States and Russia currently have strained bilateral relations, and Washington does not have an ambassador stationed in Russia.
The visit follows a period of stalled peace negotiations regarding the war in Ukraine. An August 2025 summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska concluded without breakthroughs in US-mediated peace discussions. The visit also coincides with United States pressure on Iran. On Monday, Washington threatened secondary tariffs against any country conducting trade with Tehran, while Moscow continues to maintain military, economic, and diplomatic ties with the Iranian government.
Prisoner exchange discussions
A central focus of bilateral intelligence discussions involves detained citizens. Ratcliffe personally negotiated an exchange in 2025 that secured the release of dual US-Russian citizen Ksenia Karelina in return for Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian national arrested in Cyprus in 2023. The agency previously participated in a 2024 exchange that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan.
On 12 August, Russia released former US Marine Robert Gilman following a presidential pardon by Putin, after Trump held direct discussions with the Russian leader. Russian sources indicated that Ratcliffe's agenda in Moscow may involve 58-year-old US Navy veteran Charles Zimmerman. Zimmerman received a five-year prison sentence in Russia in January for illegal weapons possession and trafficking, after Russian authorities detained him in the port of Sochi with a rifle aboard his yacht.
