CIA Director John Ratcliffe Travelled to Moscow to Warn Russia Not to Attack NATO

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters The worrying reason CIA Director John Ratcliffe took a secret trip to Russia has been revealed.

Speculation has run rampant after a U.S. military transport aircraft unexpectedly landed at a Moscow airport.

It was later revealed that Ratcliffe was traveling aboard the Boeing C-17A Globemaster III in what was the CIA chief’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital.

Insiders have now told The Wall Street Journal that Ratcliffe’s trip was to warn Russia not to launch an unprovoked attack on NATO countries.

There have been fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has faced multiple humiliations as Ukraine continues to resist Russia’s invasion, could lash out by carrying out an attack ranging from a cyberattack to an incursion into a neighboring country in order to test NATO’s resolve in the coming years.

Any scenario in which Putin attacks a member of the military alliance could have devastating consequences around the world.

Under NATO’s Article 5, an attack against one NATO country is considered an attack against all 32 allied members.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to reporters on Wednesday that Ratcliffe held talks with Russian intelligence officials during his visit, but said the CIA director did not meet with Putin.

U.S. officials previously told the Journal that it had long been assumed Putin would not provoke NATO while he was still fighting Ukraine—a conflict that has now dragged into its fifth year.

However, this assessment changed earlier this year when Kyiv began fighting back with wave after wave of drone attacks that put Moscow on the back foot.

Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Putin would be hoping to fracture the NATO alliance with an aggressive move against one of its member states.

“The question mark is how the United States would respond in that case,” Conley told the Journal.

“It has always been a goal [of Russia’s] to challenge the credibility of NATO and to separate the United States from its allies.” President Donald Trump downplayed the significance of Ratcliffe’s Moscow visit during an interview on Glenn Beck’s radio show Wednesday.

“He’s there on, you know, very sort of semi-routine.