MR. RATCLIFFE GOES TO MOSCOW

So the last time a CIA director visited Moscow was in November 2021 during the Biden administration, when William Burns traveled to the Russian capital to warn Vladimir Putin not to launch his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

We all know how that worked out.

According to what's been reported, Ratcliffe met with his Russian counterpart, FSB director Alexander Bortnikov, who in turn briefed Putin.

We also know that Ratcliffe had a stopover in the Latvian capital, Riga, and that Latvian officials called the trip a good sign.

Reports sourced to unidentified officials have been providing various interpretations of what happened.

Politico and The Wall Street Journal are reporting that Ratcliffe warned Russian officials not to escalate the conflict with America's NATO allies, in particular the Baltic states, and to stop providing assistance to Iran.

The New York Times is reporting that Ratcliffe shared the CIA's bleak assessment of the state of Russia's war against Ukraine and urged the Russians to cut a deal before their military and economic situation subsides.

gets worse.

Additionally, the Washington Post is reporting the CIA has determined that Russia views the U.S. as weakened by the war in Iran and may see an opening to exploit this.

Mike, also your colleague Thomas Wright, who you served in the Biden NSC with, had a piece in The Atlantic suggesting the visit might be a sign that Putin is getting more dangerous.

Now, all these interpretations are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Mike, what do you think is going on here and how does this compare to William Burns's visit in 2021 when you were serving the Biden administration?

Well, so, Brian, first thing I'll say is that, you know, I don't have any inside information or classified information.

Obviously, I'm just going off open sources.

And so there's some conjecture here.

But what I suspect has happened is that the U.S. has picked up some rather specific and credible intelligence suggesting that Russia may have some sort of an operational plan, likely in the Baltic region.

And we don't know whether it's an unconventional operational plan or whether it's conventional or whether it's some mix of the two, but likely some sort of unsettling plan that the U.S. got wind of and that the director of the CIA decided was credible enough that he had to travel to Moscow to try to dissuade the Russians from carrying out this plan.

Now, any time a director of the CIA or any other senior official travels to Moscow, obviously they're going to raise a range of issues.

And so I don't doubt that they discussed the war in Ukraine.

Most likely Radcliffe underscored that Russia's paying a tremendous strategic cost.

for the war in terms of men, in terms of resources, so on and so forth, that it's unlikely to prevail, which is all true.

Russia likely has now been spinning that in the press by suggesting that they countered that the U.S. was not doing well in the Persian Gulf, which also happens to be true, that we're losing strategic credibility.

And, you know, and they probably discussed a range of other topics that we don't know about.

But fundamentally, I think this was likely a reaction to the U.S. unearthing some sort of intel.

However credible, I don't know, but suggestive of Russia's designs, likely in the Baltic region, which is why Ratcliffe traveled to Bia Riga.