The Kremlin says the CIA director held talks in Moscow with his intelligence counterparts

The Kremlin said Wednesday that CIA Director John Ratcliffe held talks in Moscow with his intelligence counterparts, a rare and secretive visit at a time when relations with Washington remain strained over Russia's war in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ratcliffe did not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was informed of the contacts that were "on the intelligence agencies' level."

"Of course, President Putin is immediately informed of everything," Peskov added, refusing to say what was discussed.

Russian state news agencies reported that a U.S. military plane landed in Moscow's Vnukovo airport on Tuesday and departed later that day.

U.S. President Donald Trump played down the significance of Ratcliffe's trip, saying it was "sort of semi-routine."

"I hate to disappoint people," he said on conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck's radio show Wednesday.

A senior Ukrainian official told The Associated Press that Washington informed Kyiv a delegation would be traveling to the Russian capital and asked it to suspend strikes until it left. The official said the request did not apply to all Russian territory, but specifically to Moscow, St. Petersburg and some northern regions. Strikes on other parts of Russia continued, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk publicly.

Peskov said that "contacts between intelligence agencies are, in and of themselves, a positive phenomenon, a positive process," but he stressed that Russia-U.S. relations remain in a "profound crisis."

He added that it was "too early to say" what impact Ratcliffe's visit would have on the ties between the two countries.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia's security services, told AP that visits like the one by Ratcliffe do not "happen every year."

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Official channels of communication between Moscow and Washington have been kept alive since the 1980s and exist so both sides can talk if American or Russian lives are in danger or for other reasons, Soldatov said.

In 2021, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Putin's Security Council, met CIA Director William Burns in Moscow months before Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Burns later met Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's foreign intelligence agency, in Turkey in November 2022 to warn Russia not to deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

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