On Tuesday, August 25, CIA director John Ratcliffe flew to Moscow.
Flight-tracking caught a US Air Force C-17 flying from Andrews through Riga to Vnukovo, where it remained for eight and a half hours.
Then there was footage showing an American diplomatic motorcade in Moscow.
Kyiv complied.
The Kremlin initially claimed ignorance.
A day later, Putin’s spokesperson Peskov confirmed intelligence meetings, said Putin was briefed but did not attend, and called such contact positive even during crises.
Then, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergei Naryshkin confirmed a “working-level meeting.”
But was it just a ‘‘working-level meeting”?
Obviously not: The Wall Street Journal soon reported that Ratcliffe warned Moscow against attacking a NATO country after new American assessments concluded Putin could test the alliance with some form of military provocation and a direct challenge.
Reuters and CNN said he also pressed Russia to reduce support for Iran.
A third intelligence thread concerned Russian exercises testing readiness for another mobilization.
So then, overall, it seems like Ratcliffe delivered two explicit demands and one implicit notice: 1) Do not test NATO, 2) Stop helping Iran (good luck with that) and 3) Understand that we can see what you are preparing inside Russia (this is good capability signaling but also likely already priced in by Russians).
In this cable, we will focus on the main purpose of the visit (to warn against/deter action against NATO) and discuss why Ratcliffe specifically was the person that carried the message, and whether a warning from the Director of CIA is likely to be enough in itself as a deterrent of further action.
This Has Happened Before, and Medium Is Once Again The Message
The visit from a CIA director is extremely rare and nothing remotely close to a ‘‘working-level’’ meeting.
Indeed there is also a chilling precedent: The last known CIA-director visit to Moscow was in November 2021, when William Burns traveled at Biden’s direction to warn Putin against invading Ukraine.
He went to demonstrate Washington’s knowledge and spell out the consequences.
Putin did not outright deny the preparations, and Burns returned more alarmed.
Three months later, the tanks rolled.
That was not an intelligence failure, but it was a failure of deterrence.
Washington identified the plan and threatened consequences but failed to convince Putin that costs would exceed gains.
The echo gives Ratcliffe’s trip its weight.
But at the same time, the analogy also has its limits.
In 2021, Washington detected preparations for a specific invasion.
On the other hand, the current assessment says Putin could test NATO through a cyberattack, hybrid operation or small incursion within the next few years.
It identifies no specific target, approved operation or date.
(side note: at least in terms of what is in the public domain. It is entirely plausible that there is in fact evidence of a specific brewing operation but it was deemed prudent to not reveal the details and not to discuss it in the public domain.)
The mission confirms that the scenario has entered serious American planning.
But not necessarily that another invasion order is sitting on Putin’s desk.
(Side note: Some read Ratcliffe’s Riga stop on the way to Moscow as identifying Latvia as the target. There is no evidence for that. A flight path is not an intelligence assessment. With that said, the plane could have stopped at any other location as well: like in Germany for example. So there was probably some deliberate signaling involved. Perhaps reassurance to Latvian government: who are traditionally less belligerent against Putin than their two Baltic neighbors of Estonia and Lithuania.)
