A US Air Force Boeing C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft landed at Moscow's Vnukovo airport on Tuesday morning and brought Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Ratcliffe to the Russian capital, CBS News correspondent Jennifer Jacobs reported. This was soon confirmed by Kremlin pool journalist Alexander Yunashev, as well as Axios correspondent Barak Ravid.
Both Jacobs and Yunashev cited sources. There have been no official comments from Moscow and Washington at the moment. Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov previously said that the Kremlin does not have information about the purpose of the American plane's arrival. According to him, the Russian side is not scheduled to meet with representatives of the US administration this week.
According to Yunashev, Russian President Vladimir Putin had “a very large-scale event scheduled for Tuesday—hundreds of people were preparing.” However, a couple of days ago the date of this event was postponed – according to Yunashev, for the sake of a meeting with Ratcliffe.
The agenda for Ratcliffe's visit is unknown at this time.
According to Axios, the United States asked Ukraine not to strike Russia while the head of the CIA is there.
Let us recall that in recent days the possible arrival of American negotiators on Ukraine – special envoy Steve Witkoff, businessman Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump – has been discussed in Moscow. On August 20, Peskov said that specific dates for their visit had not been agreed upon and “no specific days were reserved,” although he called Witkoff and Kushner “welcome guests” in Moscow.
The day before, the head of the Russian International Affairs Council, Ivan Timofeev, also said that the visit of Witkoff and Kushner was being postponed due to the lack of a sufficient agenda for negotiations. Thus, at the moment there is no confirmation that the arrival of the C-17 at Vnukovo is connected with the possible arrival of representatives of the Trump administration.
