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CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced trip to Moscow on August 25 to warn Russia against attacking NATO countries, particularly the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It was the first publicly known visit to Russia by a CIA director since the start of the current Trump administration.
The warning followed new US intelligence assessments that President Vladimir Putin could launch a limited assault on an allied country to test NATO's resolve and try to fracture the alliance. The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, described the trip as an ultimatum: pull back a campaign of sabotage, cyberattacks and other attacks kept below the threshold of open war against NATO's eastern flank, or risk a direct allied response. Ratcliffe also pressed Moscow to cut its military and economic support for Iran.
Russia confirmed the visit. Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, said he held a "working-level meeting" with the CIA chief. Ratcliffe did not meet Putin, though the Kremlin said Putin was briefed, and a spokesman dismissed the reports as "scare stories." President Trump publicly played the trip down as semi-routine.
The visit lands amid a documented Russian pressure campaign against the Baltics: airspace violations, electronic warfare, cyberattacks and sabotage. On August 26 the three Baltic members of the European Commission, joined by Poland and Finland, warned Brussels of a "deteriorating security environment" and rising drone incursions. Estonia invoked NATO's Article 4 last September after three Russian jets crossed its airspace for about 12 minutes.
Officials say the concern is a cornered Putin, squeezed on the battlefield in Ukraine and eyeing a shortfall in Western munitions driven by the war with Iran. US officials said Washington would brief allies on the visit this week, and the Pentagon's policy chief met NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in Brussels on August 29.
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