President Donald Trump brushed aside the idea of a Russian assault on NATO on August 27, 2026, telling reporters in the Oval Office that his own dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin had persuaded him the alliance is under no such threat — a reading that runs against what U.S. intelligence has been warning.
“He’s not going to be attacking a NATO territory,” Trump said when asked whether Putin had given him that assurance.
Asked whether CIA Director John Ratcliffe had delivered that warning in Moscow days earlier, the president declined to comment, though he repeated that Russia would not strike.
The administration never announced the trip. Ratcliffe landed in the Russian capital on August 25, and word of it emerged that day after a U.S. Air Force jet was spotted touching down at Vnukovo airport and a diplomatic motorcade was seen there. It was his first known visit to Russia as CIA director, and no agency chief had made the journey since then-CIA Director William Burns warned the Kremlin in November 2021 against sending troops into Ukraine, less than four months before Russia invaded.
What Ratcliffe Delivered in Moscow
Ratcliffe reportedly told his Russian counterparts not to attack NATO member states and urged Moscow to end its economic and military support for Iran, part of Washington’s push to squeeze Tehran’s finances. He also warned that more U.S. sanctions would follow if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed to shipping traffic. A senior Ukrainian official said Kyiv, told in advance that a U.S. delegation was heading to Moscow, received a request to hold off on its strikes for as long as the Americans remained in the country.
A darker picture emerges from the intelligence behind the visit than from anything the president has said publicly. Russia, in the judgment of U.S. officials, had sunk into an increasingly weak position in Ukraine, and that very weakness could tempt it into moving against NATO — a way to raise what supporting Kyiv costs and to impose a settlement dictated by Moscow. Washington will not risk another conflict, Putin likely believes, because doing so would collide with American public opinion, according to one recent assessment. No sign pointed to an imminent attack, though weeks of warnings have pointed to possible sabotage, cyber or drone operations, and even a land grab in Europe.
A narrower menu of provocations appeared in earlier assessments — cyber and hybrid operations on alliance soil that stop short of conventional war, meant not to ignite a fight but to probe NATO’s cohesion and the Trump administration’s appetite for defending allies. Officials have cited drones in Romanian airspace, a rise in suspected sabotage and hacking across Europe, and a Russian missile that crossed into Poland on July 30.
Article 5 of the NATO treaty commits members to defend one another; the last country to invoke it was the United States, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A limited assault within the next few years could be Putin’s way of testing the alliance, according to new U.S. intelligence reports first described by The Wall Street Journal in August.
Lowering the temperature has already been Trump’s aim. Speaking to radio host Glenn Beck in an August 26 interview, the president described the trip as semi-routine and pushed back on the notion that a NATO threat or Iran sanctions had anything to do with it. What he wanted to talk about was an end to the war in Ukraine, and he suggested Ratcliffe’s visit might yield something.
The Kremlin Waves the Reports Away
“A lot of such scare stories are being published right now,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at his daily briefing on Thursday, August 27. The accounts bear no relation to reality, he added, and European countries are pursuing an aggressive policy toward Russia. By his account, Ratcliffe met Russian intelligence officials but did not see Putin. Moscow would prefer to achieve its aims peacefully, Peskov said of the war, but without that option it is pressing on with what it calls its special military operation. Direct talks between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are what Ukrainian officials keep calling for, and Russia keeps rebuffing them, demanding instead a withdrawal by Kyiv from the eastern Donbas region.
Sergei Naryshkin, Russia’s foreign intelligence chief, confirmed the meeting in remarks carried by state media. “The meeting took place, and there’s nothing special about it,” he said, adding that he meets foreign intelligence chiefs almost every week and that the work of such services is “a delicate and special thing.”
European intelligence agencies see it differently. A senior European Union official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they perceive no risk of a Russian attack on European NATO countries and that the assessment has not shifted.
Whatever passed between the two intelligence chiefs, the shooting did not stop. Russian missiles and drones pounded Ukrainian cities overnight into Thursday, August 27, and explosions rolled across Kyiv through the morning. The Russian Defense Ministry called the barrage, launched after nightfall on Wednesday, August 26, a massive strike on nine Ukrainian cities, saying it had hit sites tied to the war: industry, oil refineries, logistics hubs and port infrastructure. Drones also hit three major distribution centers, destroying storage facilities operated by a toy retailer and a candy maker and damaging another run by an electronics retailer.
The Fighting Grinds On
Four and a half years into the full-scale invasion, Ukraine still badly lacks the U.S.-made Patriot interceptors that can bring down Russian ballistic missiles. A Russian Tu-95MS missile carrier at the Engels base was struck by Ukrainian forces, Zelenskyy said on Friday, August 28, and he credited the operation to the Alpha unit of Ukraine’s SBU domestic security service. Farther south, the governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, pressed residents to get out — families with children and the elderly above all — saying attacks on critical infrastructure are intensifying by the day.
Trump and Putin last sat down together in Alaska on August 15, 2025, and their most recent known phone call was a nearly 90-minute conversation on July 4, 2026.
No senior Trump administration official had traveled to Moscow in months before Ratcliffe, who ranks among the highest American officials to set foot in Russia since the invasion began in 2022.
A Diplomatic Push Follows
The trip did not stay isolated for long. Ratcliffe also raised the possibility of a three-way meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy, and met the head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, as well as Naryshkin. On Saturday, September 5, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner spent more than three hours with Putin in the Kremlin carrying what Trump called a concrete proposal to end the war; Ushakov called the talks constructive and useful but announced no breakthrough. Putin ordered a three-day halt to strikes on Kyiv from midnight that Saturday and Zelenskyy reciprocated on Russian capitals through Monday, though both sides kept firing elsewhere. The envoys moved on to Kyiv, where British, French and German national security advisers joined the talks.