MOSCOW/WASHINGTON, Aug 26 (Reuters) – U.S. CIA Director John Ratcliffe spoke with Russian intelligence officials during a visit to Moscow but did not meet President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said on Wednesday of a trip that U.S. President Donald Trump described as “semi-routine.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Putin had been briefed on the outcome of Tuesday’s visit, which came as the war in Ukraine drags on and as efforts to reach a lasting peace between the United States and Iran have stalled.
Peskov declined to say what had been discussed or to provide any further details.
“All I can tell you is that there have been contacts via the security services. I can tell you that there have been no meetings with the Russian president. Naturally, President Putin is kept informed of everything without delay,” said Peskov.
Trump, in a radio interview on Wednesday, did not say specifically why Ratcliffe had travelled to Moscow but said it could prove useful.
“Now something may come … out of it. We’re working very hard to get that war ended,” Trump told the Glenn Beck Program, referring to the war in Ukraine.
Asked whether the CIA chief went to Moscow to discuss potential Russian action to test the NATO military alliance or to discuss Iran sanctions, Trump added: “None of the above. He’s there, you know, very sort of semi-routine.”
The last known visit by a U.S. CIA director to the Russian capital took place when Ratcliffe’s predecessor William Burns held talks with Putin in November 2021, three months the war in Ukraine began.
Asked if visits by such senior U.S. officials could help improve the dire state of U.S.-Russia relations, Peskov said that contacts between the two countries’ intelligence agencies were a positive thing.
“These contacts often continue even during the most difficult periods in bilateral relations. Our president, incidentally, has spoken about this. However, it is still too early to say to what extent this will, overall, help to steer our bilateral relations out of the profound crisis in which they currently find themselves,” he said.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov, Nandita Bose, Bo Erickson and Katharine Jackson; Writing by Alessandra Prentice and Susan Heavey; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Timothy Heritage)
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