The press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov announced the official reason for the surprising and unannounced visit of CIA Director John Ratcliffe to Moscow. In a brief comment to the American publication The Washington Post a Kremlin spokesman confirmed that the visit was directly related to maintaining contacts between the special services of the Russian Federation and the United States.
The visit, which is being held in strict confidentiality, has caused a wave of international comments. The American military transport aircraft Boeing C-17A Globemaster III, on which Ratcliffe traveled, landed at Moscow's Vnukovo airport; yesterday at around 10:04 a.m. Moscow time, according to flight tracking data cited by BBC News Russian Service. Before arriving in the Russian capital, the plane took off from Andrews military airbase in Maryland and spent a day in Riga, Latvia.
Initially, Peskov told reporters that the Kremlin had no information about the landing of a US government plane in Moscow. Hours later, however, it was clarified to American media that this was a planned working meeting within the framework of intelligence agencies. This is John Ratcliffe's first official visit to Russia since he took over as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Although the content of the negotiations remains classified, according to publications by CBS News and Axios, the visit is taking place in the context of heightened global risks and specific geopolitical changes that require direct channels of communication between Moscow and Washington. The US Central Intelligence Agency is currently refusing to officially comment on the subject to the TASS news agency.