Making Sense of John Ratcliffe’s Trip to Moscow

A CIA director has traveled to Moscow before. Almost five years ago, Bill Burns went to Moscow to inform the Kremlin that the United States knew of its plan to attack Ukraine. Burns’s effort to deter the invasion failed. 

The memory of Burns’s November 2021 trip explains the consternation over Ratcliffe’s visit. Tensions between the United States and Russia are running high. Putin has rebuffed U.S. efforts to end the war in Ukraine. The United States continues to share critical intelligence that is enabling Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia. Meanwhile, Russia is sharing intelligence and technology with Iran that it has used to target U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf. Just yesterday Putin met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and reiterated Moscow’s support for Tehran. 

Tensions between Russia and the West more broadly are running even higher. The United Kingdom’s decision last month to provide Kyiv with cruise missile technology prompted the Russian foreign ministry to threaten to strike British targets in retaliation. Russia is suspected of sabotaging weapons factories in Bulgaria, Estonia, and the Netherlands, while Germany has accused it of attempting to attack the Leipzig/Halle Airport with three armed drones.  

These events are fueling speculation that Putin could soon seek to test NATO’s cohesion, and its Article 5 pledge, because he sees the West as using Ukraine to wage a proxy war against Russia. Ratcliffe’s stop in Latvia, which shares a border with Russia, on his way to Moscow added to concerns that his trip sought to stop new Russian aggression. 

To better understand the significance of Ratcliffe’s trip, I sat down with my Council on Foreign Relations colleague Steve Sestanovich. Besides being the author of the terrific book Maximalist: America in the World from Truman to Obama, he served for four years during the Clinton administration as U.S. ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union.  

Here are my three takeaways: 

1. Explanations abound for why Ratcliffe went to Moscow. The White House has not revealed the purpose of the CIA director’s trip. The New York Times reported that he went to press the case that Russia was losing its war with Ukraine and should cut a deal before things get worse. NBC News reported that his mission was to warn Russia against sharing intelligence with Iran. The Washington Post reported that he sought to tell his Russian counterparts that the U.S. military remained potent despite the Iran war. Politico reported that he warned the Kremlin not to attack the Baltic states. Axios reported that he proposed having Trump, Putin, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet to settle Russia’s war with Ukraine. Ratcliffe likely conveyed some, if not all, of these messages. But no one outside the two capitals knows the priority he gave to them or whether they cover all of what he said. 

2. Ratcliffe’s trip might have been more about U.S. domestic politics and managing allied relations than delivering stern messages to the Kremlin. Steve argued that Trump wants to be seen as getting tough on Putin. The Senate has overwhelmingly passed a bill that would significantly increase sanctions on Russia, but Trump is at best lukewarm on the legislation as it awaits House action. Meanwhile, European countries, and especially the Baltic states, fear that Putin could soon test Article 5. Sending Ratcliffe to Moscow is one way to derail the sanctions bill and calm European nerves. The White House had to know that Ratcliffe’s secret trip would become public even before his C-17A Globemaster III touched down in Russia and inevitably spark talk of what messages were being delivered. Likewise, the White House likely believed that European capitals would read Ratcliffe’s stop in Latvia, where he met with Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs, as U.S. support for the frontline European states. 

3. September could be a pivotal month. Steve noted that Ratcliffe’s trip prompted an enigmatic comment by Zelenskyy: “September may change a lot.” The Ukrainian president did not specify what he had in mind. Steve observed that this comment “suggests something that he’s thinking about in the near term, that either is a worry or an opportunity.” Zelenskyy could have been signaling fear of intensifying Russian attacks on Ukraine, or hinting at escalating Ukrainian counterattacks, or foreshadowing a breakthrough on the diplomatic front.  

Steve and I also discussed why Ratcliffe did not meet with Putin, why Ratcliffe rather than Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff went in the first place, and why Ratcliffe’s Russian counterparts are unlikely to push Putin to seek a diplomatic settlement with Ukraine. I encourage you to give the episode a listen.

Oscar Berry and Asher Ross assisted in the preparation of this article.