WASHINGTON — CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Russia to holds talks in Moscow, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The person declined to say who Ratcliffe was meeting with or the focus of the talks. The CIA declined to comment.
It’s Ratcliffe’s first known trip to Moscow as CIA director. He made headlines with a visit to Venezuela in January to meet the interim president, only about two weeks after the U.S. military seized President Nicolas Maduro in a raid in the capital Caracas.
He also traveled to Cuba in May to meet government leaders. He was the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit the island, which is economic crisis after the U.S. tightened sanctions.
News of Ratcliffe’s travel came as mystery swirled around a U.S. military transport aircraft that landed in Russia, according to tracking data.
It was not known who was on board the plane and why it was in Moscow. When asked, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not have information about the aircraft.
U.S. military officials, the White House, the U.S. embassy in Moscow and Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to questions about the flight’s mission.
Two planes, a C-130 cargo plane and a C-40 landed in Riga for same mission, according to a U.S. official. The C-130 then went on to Russia, the official said.
Data from FlightRadar24 tracking site showed a plane approached Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow just after 10 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) after taking off from Riga, the capital of Latvia, two hours earlier.
It had departed from the U.S. Air Force’s Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Sunday afternoon just before 5 p.m. ET., the data showed. That plane apparently left Moscow Tuesday afternoon, according to flight radar data.
CBS News and Axios first reported on the CIA chief’s unannounced visit.
CIA directors sometimes act as envoys for presidents in high-stakes talks with adversaries. Former President Joe Biden turned to then CIA director William Burns to relay stern warnings to Russia before and after President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Dan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Yuliya Talmazan is a reporter for NBC News Digital, based in London.
