Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The CIA Director met with Russian intelligence officers, not with Putin himself – and analysts suggest the Russian leader might be shielded from the harsh truth about how the war in Ukraine is going.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe took a highly unusual trip to Moscow this week.
Several media outlets reported that he went there to deliver a stark warning about the war in Ukraine and that the American message for the Russian leadership was incredibly bleak.
According to The New York Times (NYT), the message was that if the Kremlin refuses to start serious peace talks, Russia will watch its military and economic standing crumble even further.
Ratcliffe handed this grim assessment straight to Aleksandr Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service. The United States chose this specific route for a reason.
Looking for an audience
According to the NYT, American intelligence analysts suspect that Vladimir Putin is shielded from the truth. They highly doubt his inner circle brings him honest updates about their massive battlefield losses.
By using a top spy to deliver the facts, Washington hoped to bypass those aides entirely. Since Putin is a former Soviet intelligence officer himself, a direct message from the CIA director carries unique weight.
But as several analysts and think tanks have previously assessed, the Russian military leadership has a tendency not to give Putin the truth about the situation on the ground.
The pro-Kremlin blogger community on Telegram, known as Z-bloggers, has even coined a term for untruthful battlefield reports from the military leadership: “beautiful reports.”
Minutes to live
The reality on the ground is grim, as Russia’s advances are measured in meters and thousands of soldiers pay the ultimate price for the insignificant gains.
Just last month, the CIA chief pointed out that a Russian soldier on the front line has a life expectancy of “less than 35 minutes” in combat.
He also noted that Russia has taken only about one percent of Ukrainian land over the past year and a half. Ratcliffe blamed this sluggish progress on Ukraine’s clear “mastery” of drone warfare.
This marks a massive pivot in Washington. Last year, President Donald Trump and his senior team assumed a Russian victory was only a matter of time.
Waiting for an answer
Now, those assumptions have vanished. The Russian military machine has stalled out completely.
The Kremlin confirmed the secret talks took place on Tuesday. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that Putin received a full briefing on the meeting, though the Russian leader did not meet Ratcliffe face to face.
President Trump brushed off the drama. He called the Moscow visit “semi-routine” and hinted that spy-to-spy chats might just help end the grinding conflict.
