{"id":222210,"date":"2026-08-27T21:17:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T21:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/cia-director-flies-unannounced-to-moscow-to-hold-talks-source-says-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T21:17:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T21:17:16","slug":"cia-director-flies-unannounced-to-moscow-to-hold-talks-source-says-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/cia-director-flies-unannounced-to-moscow-to-hold-talks-source-says-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"CIA director flies unannounced to Moscow to hold talks, source says – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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WASHINGTON \u2014 CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Russia to hold unspecified talks in Moscow, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The person declined to say whom Ratcliffe was meeting with or what the focus of the talks was. The CIA declined to comment.
It\u2019s Ratcliffe\u2019s first known trip to Moscow as CIA director. He made headlines with a visit to Venezuela in January<\/a> to meet with interim President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez about two weeks after the U.S. military seized President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in a raid in Caracas.
He also traveled to Cuba in May<\/a> to meet with government leaders. He was the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit the island, which is under severe economic pressure after the U.S. tightened sanctions.
News of Ratcliffe\u2019s travel came as mystery swirled around a U.S. military transport aircraft that landed in Moscow<\/a>, according to tracking data.
It was not known who was on board the plane and why it was in Moscow<\/a>. When asked, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not have information about the aircraft.
Neither U.S. military officials, the White House, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow nor the Russian Embassy in Washington immediately responded to questions about the flight\u2019s mission.
Two planes, a C-130 cargo plane and a C-40, landed in Riga, the capital of Latvia, as part of the same mission, according to a U.S. official. The C-130 then went on to Russia, the official said.
Data from FlightRadar24 tracking site showed a plane approached Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow just after 10 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) after taking off from Riga two hours earlier.
It had departed from the U.S. Air Force\u2019s Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Sunday just before 5 p.m. ET, the data showed. That plane had apparently left Moscow on Tuesday afternoon, according to flight radar data.
CBS News and Axios first reported on the CIA chief\u2019s unannounced visit.
CIA directors sometimes act as envoys for presidents in high-stakes talks with adversaries. Former President Joe Biden turned to then-CIA Director William Burns to relay stern warnings to Russia before and after President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Dan De Luce\u00a0is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit.\u00a0
Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Yuliya Talmazan is a reporter for NBC News Digital, based in London.
Matthew Mulligan is a senior reporter\u00a0for the NBC News Social Newsgathering team based in London.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeWASHINGTON \u2014 CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Russia to hold unspecified talks in Moscow, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.The person declined to say whom Ratcliffe was meeting with or what the focus of the talks was. The CIA declined to comment. It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}