CIA Director Ratcliffe Just Made a Secret Trip to Moscow — and Nobody Is Saying Why

 John Ratcliffe made an unannounced trip to Moscow on Tuesday — his first known visit to Russia since taking the job. A U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster was spotted at a Moscow airport. A U.S. diplomatic motorcade was photographed moving through the city. Neither Washington nor the Kremlin has said a word about it. Ratcliffe spent approximately four hours in Moscow before departing.

The trip comes at a moment of significant tension. U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Putin’s risk calculus may be shifting — that the Russian leader is potentially increasingly willing to authorize provocative actions against NATO members, including hybrid operations and deniable measures short of conventional military attack, specifically to test the resolve of the alliance and the Trump administration.The fact that Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow rather than Putin’s representatives traveling to Washington tells you something about the nature of the conversation. You go there when you want to make a point in person, or when the message needs to be delivered face-to-face rather than through back channels. You go there when something is serious enough to justify the optics of the CIA director showing up in the Russian capital.