The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has described as "routine" the presence in Moscow of the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, an unexpected trip that takes place amid rising tensions between Washington and Iran and with the peace process for Ukraine completely blocked.
During an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck, Trump stated about Ratcliffe: "He is there and it's something almost routine: I hate to disappoint people. We would like to see an end to the war in Ukraine; it's a war that would never have started if I were president."
The former Republican president has rejected that the trip of the CIA head aims to send a direct warning to the Kremlin about NATO's red lines in the face of possible aggression or destabilizing maneuvers. That hypothesis had gained traction after recalling the trip that then-CIA director William Burns made to Russia a few months before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Trump has also denied that Ratcliffe is in the Russian capital to warn Vladimir Putin's government of the risks of helping Iran evade the new sanctions package. "It's none of the above," he concluded during the radio conversation.
For his part, Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov confirmed the day before that Ratcliffe does not have a meeting scheduled with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "All I can say is that there have been contacts through intelligence services," said the presidential representative.
The trip of the CIA chief comes just a day after the U.S. Treasury Department announced a new round of sanctions against Tehran and in a context of total stalemate in the talks to end the war in Ukraine.