CIA chief 'bypassed usual channels' to send blunt message straight to Putin's inner circle
The head of the CIA secretly flew to Moscow this week and handed Russia's top spy a warning.
According to The New York Times, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to the Russian capital for a secret sit-down with Aleksandr Bortnikov, chief of the FSB, Russia's domestic intelligence agency.
Citing current and former officials, the outlet reports Ratcliffe used the meeting to lay out a grim picture of how the war against Ukraine is really going for Moscow, and to push the Russians toward striking a deal before things get worse.
Notably, Ratcliffe reportedly stopped short of threatening any consequences if Vladimir Putin chose to ignore him and keep fighting.
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Why did the CIA go around normal diplomatic channels?
The visit ran separately from the talks being handled by Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, who've been leading the White House's official outreach to Russian officials.
The CIA, however, has its own long-standing line of communication with the FSB and Russia's foreign intelligence arm, the SVR.
Per the report, the thinking among some officials is that a direct message from America's top spy might land harder with Putin than anything routed through conventional diplomacy, given that the Russian leader is a former intelligence officer himself.
The report also suggests CIA analysts have reportedly wondered for some time whether Putin's own inner circle has been straight with him about how badly the war has actually gone.
How has the war in Ukraine changed since last year?
Trump and several senior advisers were reportedly confident, as recently as last year, that Russia was headed for a decisive battlefield win.
That confidence hasn't aged well: the report notes Russian forces have taken heavy losses since, and their advances on the ground have largely stalled out.
Whether Ratcliffe's Moscow trip signals any actual shift in US policy toward Russia or Ukraine remains unclear.
What does seem clear is that it fits a broader pattern from the Trump administration, which has been trying multiple angles to jolt stalled negotiations back to life, as it becomes increasingly apparent Kyiv isn't backing down in the east even as US military backing has scaled back.
Ratcliffe reportedly framed the trip around that same core message: with Russia's military and economic position looking bleak, he told Bortnikov the moment had arrived for Moscow to get serious about ending the war at the negotiating table.
This is a breaking news story, more as we get it..
Topics: Russia, Vladimir Putin
Thomas Bamford