The Kremlin has dismissed reports that CIA director John Ratcliffe warned Russia against attacking a NATO member state during an unannounced visit to Moscow, calling the accounts “horror stories” with no basis in reality.<\/p>\n
“It goes without saying that these have nothing in common with reality,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told journalists on Thursday. He said Moscow would prefer to achieve its goals by peaceful means, but that the “special operation” – the Kremlin’s official term for the war against Ukraine – would continue in order to advance Russia’s interests and achieve security.<\/p>\n
Peskov also accused the West of aggressive behaviour. “This aggression comes from the European states,” he said, dismissing contrary claims as nothing more than “ordinary newspaper fabrications.”<\/p>\n
Before Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, Moscow’s representatives similarly dismissed Western media reports about war preparations as “horror stories.” Ukraine has since received massive support from Western countries in its defence.<\/p>\n
The Wall Street Journal and Politico, citing unnamed sources, reported on Wednesday that Ratcliffe had warned Russia against attacking NATO allies during his visit to Moscow on Tuesday. Little has become known about the content of his talks.<\/p>\n
According to Politico, the CIA chief warned Russia against escalation particularly with regard to NATO’s eastern partners in the Baltic States, and also pressed the Kremlin to scale back its military and financial support for Iran.<\/p>\n
Ratcliffe’s visit attracted close attention in the Baltic States – not least because the CIA chief is believed to have flown to Moscow via the Latvian capital Riga, a route that could be tracked on flight-tracking websites, though no one in Riga was willing to comment on the flight of a US military transport aircraft.<\/p>\n
Government representatives in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stressed that the level and assessment of the military threat had not changed.<\/p>\n
“The risk of a direct Russian invasion is currently low,” Latvian President Edgars Rink\u0113vi\u010ds wrote on Facebook. “Various sabotages, cyberattacks and hybrid operations are still possible.”<\/p>\n
Similar statements were made in Estonia and Lithuania.<\/p>\n
The head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, confirmed on Thursday his meeting with Ratcliffe but gave no details of the content. He said they had discussed issues falling within the remit of the intelligence services, Russian news agencies reported.<\/p>\n
Naryshkin described the meeting as a “working format” and said it was nothing unusual, adding that he regularly held similar talks with intelligence chiefs from other countries, either in person or online.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump confirmed Ratcliffe’s visit during a radio programme hosted by conservative presenter Glenn Beck, but denied that the trip had been in the context of a possible move by Russia against NATO, or the Iran conflict. According to Trump, Ratcliffe’s visit had been “semi routine.”<\/p>\n
“We would like to see the war with Ukraine end,” he added.<\/p>\n
Kremlin spokesman Peskov confirmed that Ratcliffe had come to Moscow for talks “between the intelligence services,” but stressed there had been no meeting between Putin and Ratcliffe.<\/p>\n
The visit was likely Ratcliffe’s first to Moscow as CIA director. The last known visit by a CIA head to Russia was in 2021, when then-director William Burns travelled to Moscow and met Putin.<\/p>\n
Burns had been sent by then-US president Joe Biden to help prevent an escalation in the Ukraine conflict. Putin nevertheless launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kremlin has dismissed reports that CIA director John Ratcliffe warned Russia against attacking a NATO member state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3611,7035,7140,57,7139,6988,238,2437,7,20,7134,71,7135,607],"class_list":["post-12094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-cia-director","tag-dmitri-peskov","tag-donald-trump","tag-horror-stories","tag-john-ratcliffe","tag-kremlin","tag-moscow","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-sergei-naryshkin","tag-ukraine","tag-us-central-intelligence-agency","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}