Quick visit to Russian soil for John Ratcliffe. The CIA director flew to Moscow today, Tuesday 25 August, aboard a C-17 which departed from the Andrews base. According to various international media, Ratcliffe went to Russia for “confidential meetings”, on which no further information is known.
The visit to Moscow
This morning a US Air Force Boeing C-17A Globemaster III transport plane was spotted at Moscow airport together with a diplomatic motorcade. No confirmation has been received from the US and Russian governments on the identity of the US official in Russia or the purpose of the visit. The identity was revealed later by Axios journalist Barak Ravid in a post on X.
If the news is confirmed, it would be Ratcliffe’s first known trip to Russia as CIA director. U.S. intelligence has also recently played a role in recent U.S.-Russian detainee exchanges, including the April 2025 release of Ksenia Karelina, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen whose case was personally negotiated by Ratcliffe.
The agency was also involved in the 2024 prisoner exchange that led to the release of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich and Marine veteran Paul Whelan. In November 2021, however, it was the former director of the CIA, William Burns, who went to Moscow to meet Putin and warn him against an invasion of Ukraine.
The indiscretion
Ratcliffe’s visit to Russia was also confirmed by an indiscretion from the Financial Times: “Last week Trump administration officials asked Kiev not to hit Moscow, St. Petersburg and the northern regions of Russia with its long-range missiles and drones on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, i.e. when the United States would send a plane carrying a high-ranking official to the Russian capital. Ukraine agreed.”
The plane took off again
The CIA director’s visit to Moscow lasted only a few hours: according to online global air traffic monitoring systems, the US military plane has already left for Latvia, through which it had made the outward flight during the journey from the Andrews military base, near Washington.