The head of the Russian intelligence services, Sergei Narishkin, confirmed this Thursday that he held a meeting in Moscow with the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, in which they discussed "a series of issues" related to their respective fields of work. The meeting, held unexpectedly last Tuesday, has been presented by the Russian side as a routine appointment.
"The meeting took place; there is nothing unusual about it," Narishkin stated. "During the meeting, we discussed several topics that fall within the scope of the intelligence services," he added, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
In this regard, the head of Russian intelligence emphasized that "the scope of the intelligence services is a rather delicate and specific matter," without providing further details about the content of the conversations. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, also downplayed the meeting and described Ratcliffe's visit to Moscow as "routine."
Trump also rejected that the head of the CIA had traveled to the Russian capital to issue a direct warning to the Kremlin about NATO's red lines, particularly in light of the possibility of direct aggression or destabilization. This hypothesis had gained traction following the trip made to Russia by the then director of the agency, William Burns, a few months before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.