A US military transport plane landed at Moscow's Vnukovo airport on Tuesday while CIA Director John Ratcliffe held unannounced talks with Russian officials, according to a report by CBS News, the American broadcasting partner of the BBC. Neither Washington nor Moscow has officially confirmed the nature of the visit or who Ratcliffe met with.
Flight-tracking data from Flightradar24, cited by Reuters and the BBC, shows the aircraft, a Boeing C-17 Globemaster registered as 07-7181, departed Riga, the Latvian capital, at 05:50 GMT and landed in Vnukovo roughly an hour later. The plane had arrived in Riga on August 23 from Joint Base Andrews near Washington, D.C. It left Moscow the same Tuesday, returning to Riga shortly before 17:00 GMT.
Reuters could not confirm whether the aircraft was carrying cargo or passengers. The Kremlin said it had no information about the flight. Videos posted on social media showed the plane approaching Moscow's airport, as well as a diplomatic motorcade moving through the Russian capital.
According to the BBC, ahead of the trip the United States told Ukraine that a senior delegation would be traveling to Moscow and asked Kyiv to suspend strikes until the delegation had left, a senior Ukrainian official told CBS. The visit is believed to be Ratcliffe's first trip to Russia as CIA director, though he has reportedly maintained contact with his Russian intelligence counterparts.
Possible motives
John Foreman, who served as the British military attache in Moscow from 2019 to 2022, told BBC Radio 4's PM program the trip could be related to 'escalation management,' amid speculation that recent drone activity in Germany may be linked to Russia. 'The Americans don't normally send such a high-ranking official to Moscow unannounced at short notice unless something is up,' Foreman said. He also pointed to the possible release of American detainees held in Russia as another factor that could be at play. For readers unfamiliar with the CIA's structure: the director is the agency's top official, reporting to the president on foreign intelligence matters.
Ratcliffe has previously been involved in negotiations that led to the release of Russian-American citizen Ksenia Karelina, jailed in Russia for over a year, and the CIA took part in the 2024 prisoner swap that brought home Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former US Marine Paul Whelan and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. The last direct flight by a US-registered jet from Europe to Russia took place in January this year, when special envoys Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner traveled to Moscow for peace talks with President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. US-Russia talks on the Ukraine conflict have largely stalled since then, amid tension over Iran.