CIA director flies unannounced to Moscow to hold talks, source says
NBC News · LC · trust 68/100
The person declined to say whom was Ratcliffe meeting with or what was the focus of the talks. The CIA declined to comment.
It’s Ratcliffe’s first known trip to Moscow as CIA director. He made headlines with a visit to Venezuela in January to meet with interim President Delcy Rodríguez about two weeks after the U.S. military seized President Nicolas Maduro in a raid in Caracas.
He also traveled to Cuba in May to meet with government leaders. He was the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit the island, which is under severe economic pressure after the U.S. tightened sanctions.
News of Ratcliffe’s travel came as mystery swirled around a U.S. military transport aircraft that landed in Moscow , according to tracking data.
It was not known who was on board the plane and why it was in Moscow . When asked, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not have information about the aircraft.
Neither U.S. military officials, the White House, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow nor the Russian Embassy in Washington immediately respond to questions about the flight’s mission.
Two planes, a C-130 cargo plane and a C-40, landed in Riga, the capital of Latvia, as part of the same mission, according to a U.S. official. The C-130 then went on to Russia, the official said.
Data from FlightRadar24 tracking site showed a plane approached Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow just after 10 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) after taking off from Riga two hours earlier.
It had departed from the U.S. Air Force’s Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Sunday just before 5 p.m. ET, the data showed. That plane had apparently left Moscow on Tuesday afternoon, according to flight radar data.
CBS News and Axios first reported on the CIA chief’s unannounced visit.
CIA directors sometimes act as envoys for presidents in high-stakes talks with adversaries. Former President Joe Biden turned to then-CIA Director William Burns to relay stern warnings to Russia before and after President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Share Add to Google Dan De Luce Dan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Courtney Kube Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Yuliya Talmazan Yuliya Talmazan is a reporter for NBC News Digital, based in London.
Matthew Mulligan Matthew Mulligan is a senior reporter for the NBC News Social Newsgathering team based in London.
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