The New York Times and The Washington Post have reported that John Ratcliffe, director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, arrived in Moscow on Tuesday on a secret, unannounced trip approved by the White House. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also confirmed the visit, saying the meeting took place as part of coordination between security services.<\/p>\n
According to the reports, Ratcliffe traveled to Russia aboard a military C-17 aircraft from Andrews Air Base near Washington. The plane had stopped in Riga, the capital of Latvia, before reaching Moscow.<\/p>\n
Data from the FlightRadar24 website shows that the aircraft remained in Moscow for about eight hours before departing. The two newspapers also said images and videos published online showed a convoy of vehicles with diplomatic plates moving through the Russian capital.<\/p>\n
U.S. officials have so far not provided an official explanation for the purpose of the trip. The CIA, the Pentagon and the U.S. Air Force have declined to comment.<\/p>\n
The New York Times and The Washington Post wrote that the secrecy surrounding the trip has increased speculation about the focus of the talks. Among the leading possibilities are contacts related to the Russia-Ukraine war, in which Ratcliffe played a role last year as part of the U.S. team responsible for negotiations to end the conflict.<\/p>\n
The Washington Post also wrote that Russia has intensified its missile and drone attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities at a time when Ukraine is short of air defence systems. The two newspapers added that the CIA has also taken part in contacts and negotiations related to Americans detained in Russian prisons.<\/p>\n
One of them is 74-year-old Steven Hubbard, who has been held in Russia since April 2022. After being accused of joining Ukrainian forces, he was sentenced to six years and 10 months in prison.<\/p>\n
Moscow is the capital of Russia and one of the main centres of political and security decision-making in the country. The CIA is also one of Washington’s key intelligence agencies and plays a central role in security cases, prisoner exchanges and sensitive contacts with U.S. rivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reports say CIA chief John Ratcliffe made a secret trip to Moscow, with talks possibly focused on Ukraine and detained Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}