CIA Chief’s Surprise Moscow Trip Was to Warn Russia Not to Attack NATO
Warning comes after new U.S. intelligence assessments indicated Russian president could launch a limited assault
CIA Director John Ratcliffe Anna Moneymaker/
By Lara Seligman, Aleaxander Sward, and Josh Dawsey
Aug. 26, 2026 6:10 pm ET
Original article contains links
See also a more recent article: The New York Times, "C. I. A Chief Delivered Bleak Assessment of Russia's War in Secretive Moscow Visit," https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/us/politics/cia-director-russia-ukraine.html
Quick summary (cited in the WSJ article)
-- CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow to deliver a message to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.
--The trip follows U.S. intelligence assessments that Putin could test NATO’s resolve with a limited assault on an allied country.
-- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ratcliffe held talks with Russian intelligence officials but did not meet with Putin.
--This summary was generated with AI and reviewed by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism/
CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow to deliver a message to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.
The surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.
The trip was spy-agency chief John Ratcliffe’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital. It followed new U.S. intelligence assessments, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years.
U.S. officials are concerned that Putin, squeezed in Ukraine and under pressure at home, could launch an assault ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, likely on a Baltic nation, the Journal reported.
A shortfall in critical Western munitions, driven by expenditures in the Iran war, also could factor into Putin’s thinking. The U.S. has degraded its stockpile of certain weapons because of transfers to Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion, as well as the Iran conflict.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday that Ratcliffe held talks with Russian intelligence officials during his time in the Russian capital, but he didn’t meet with Putin. Putin was briefed on the talks, Peskov said.
The White House has offered little clarity about the Ratcliffe trip. During an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck on Wednesday, President Trump described the trip as “semi-routine” and pivoted to discussing Russia’s war with Ukraine. “Something may come out of it,” Trump said. “We’re working very hard to get that war ended and frankly they both want to see it ended at this point.”
A spokeswoman for the White House referred reporters to Trump’s Wednesday comments. A spokeswoman for the CIA declined to comment.
Ratcliffe, one of Trump’s closest aides, was the latest U.S. official to travel to Moscow following several visits by Steve Witkoff, a U.S. envoy for Ukraine-Russia peace talks.
The trip was a rare visit by a U.S. spy-agency chief with the Russia-Ukraine war now in its fifth year. The last known visit by a CIA director to Moscow was in November 2021, when William Burns, who led the agency under former President Joe Biden, warned Putin not to attack Ukraine.
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[The article] appeared in the August 27, 2026, print edition as 'CIA Chief Warned Russia Against Hit On NATO'.
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Appeared in the August 27, 2026, print edition as 'CIA Chief Warned Russia Against Hit On NATO'.
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From the Wall Street Journal article [on the authors of the article]
-- Lara Seligman is a national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, where she covers the White House and the Pentagon. She previously spent four years at Politico as a defense reporter. Lara's reporting on the military and the defense industry has taken her around the world, with time spent covering geopolitics in real time in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Lara previously covered the Pentagon and national security for Foreign Policy. She also has written for publications including the Washington Post and Defense News.
-- Alexander Ward is a national security reporter covering the White House and State Department for The Wall Street Journal in Washington. Alex’s reporting focuses in particular on the inner workings of the National Security Council and how top players in an administration formulate and execute foreign policy. Alex was previously the White House and national security reporter at Politico, where he was also the first author of its "National Security Daily" newsletter. Before that, he was Vox's White House reporter covering foreign policy and worked at the Atlantic Council think tank covering national security and military affairs.
Alex has won numerous awards for his reporting and was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist along with Politico colleagues for Supreme Court coverage.
In February 2024, Alex published his first book, "The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy after Trump." He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
-- Josh Dawsey is chief political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He began his career at the Journal and re-joined the newspaper in 2025 after working for eight years at The Washington Post. Josh was part of a team of journalists at The Post that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2022 and a team that won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He is the winner of the 2026 Aldo Beckman Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage and a two-time recipient of the White House Correspondents Association award for deadline news reporting.
Josh is a lecturer at the Allbritton Journalism Institute and the enthusiastic owner of a rambunctious rescue dog named Pepper.
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