The director of the CIA flew there Moscow to warn Russia that it had to make a deal Ukraine before the military and economic situation deteriorates.
On Tuesday it was reported that John Ratcliffe had made a secret flight, as speculation mounted over why a US military plane had landed in Russia.
Current and former officials have revealed that Mr Ratcliffe issued the warning to Aleksandr Bortnikov, head of Russia’s FSB intelligence service, but made no threats about the possible consequences if Russian President Vladimir Putin ignored the CIA’s assessment.
The CIA has long wondered whether that was the case PutinThe invasion advisors tell him the whole truth about the trajectory of the invasion and the toll it is taking on the country.
The US agency has also maintained lines of communication with both the FSB and Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, for years.
Individual, Donald Trump‘s envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushnerthe US president’s son-in-law, has set up communication channels with some of Putin’s senior advisers.
Officials told the New York Times when Putin, himself a former intelligence official, would take the warning seriously if it came from the CIA director.
Mr Ratcliffe spoke to his Ukrainian colleagues before meeting Bortnikov in Moscow, assuring them he would make no concessions on behalf of the Ukrainians.
The CIA has long wondered whether Vladimir Putin’s advisers are giving him the full truth about the trajectory of the invasion and the toll it will take on the country.
The flight that Ratcliffe made was very mysterious
John Ratcliffe made a secret flight to Moscow earlier this week and issued a warning to the FSB
Over the past year, Russia’s advance on Ukrainian territory has virtually come to a standstill. Initially, many people believed that a Russian victory was inevitable.
But the Kremlin’s forces have suffered enormous losses and there is little to show for it.
Last month, Mr Ratcliffe warned that the average life expectancy of a Russian soldier only took 20 minutes.
Speaking at the Defense and Innovation Summit in Pennsylvania, the CIA director said: “That’s because AI-powered drones have become such specialized, cheap killing machines.”
According to the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s AI drones are responsible for more than 80 percent of enemy targets destroyed.
About two million soldiers have been killed, wounded or missing since Ukraine was invaded in early 2022, including 1.4 million Russians, according to a recent estimate by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a U.S. think tank.
Neither side releases data on military casualties.
Russian forces have struggled to advance along the 750-mile front line this year, with Ukraine’s drones countering Russia’s numerical advantage in troops.
A drone strike early on Friday killed one man in Kherson, hours after authorities urged residents to leave as Russia’s intensifying attacks on the southern Ukrainian city risked disrupting power supplies ahead of the long winter.
Russian troops are positioned across the Dnipro River, which borders the city briefly occupied by Moscow in 2022, making it particularly vulnerable to shelling.
A C-17 Globemaster, believed to be carrying CIA Director John Ratcliffe, lands near Riga, Latvia, on August 25
Further from the front line, the Ukrainian capital Kiev was mainly targeted this summer
The drone strike early Friday in Kherson’s Korabelnyi district killed a 61-year-old man who was taken to hospital with a “penetrating chest wound,” said Yaroslav Shanko, the head of Kherson’s city administration.
Three others were injured and taken to the hospital in the Dniprovsky district.
The attack came after regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin on Thursday urged Kherson residents, “especially families with children and the elderly,” to “please leave.”
Prokudin said there was an “extremely difficult security situation” in the city, which had a population of about 280,000 before the start of the Russian invasion. It was occupied by Russian troops from March to November 2022.
“The enemy is intensifying its attacks every day on the region’s critical infrastructure,” he said, adding that “Russian forces again attacked Kherson’s district heating plant with glide bombs on Wednesday.”
The facility “suffered very serious damage,” he said, adding that Kherson might be “without electricity or heat not for hours or days but for a long period of time.”
Ukraine’s stockpiles of interceptor missiles have also begun to dwindle.
“There is no way to destroy these types of drones or aerial bombs in any region of our country,” he said.
Cars burn as firefighters try to extinguish a blaze after a Russian drone attack in the Kiev region of Ukraine on Friday
Last winter, Russia repeatedly targeted Ukrainian power plants, leaving millions of people in cold and darkness
The aftermath of a Russian drone attack in Kiev on August 27
Firefighters at the site of a warehouse hit by a Russian airstrike in Sumy, Ukraine, in a photo released Friday
Last winter, Russia repeatedly targeted Ukrainian power plants, leaving millions of people in cold and darkness.
Zelenskiy warned earlier this month that Ukraine has “virtually no intact thermal power plants.”
Russia and Ukraine have been stepping up their long-range attacks for several months, increasingly targeting civilian infrastructure such as logistics warehouses, oil and port facilities.
These attacks are causing an increasing number of civilian casualties.
Further from the front line, the Ukrainian capital Kiev was mainly targeted this summer.
According to local authorities, the capital was under an air raid alert for almost 15 hours on Thursday due to repeated drone attacks.
This “shows another way in which Russia uses its weapons to disrupt civilian life,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in response, warning that Moscow “continues to choose terror and war.”
In light of the Russian bombings, Mr. Zelensky has continuously appealed to allies for new air defense systems.
Although Ukraine has received new promises of military aid from European countries including France in recent days, the country relies mainly on advanced US Patriot systems to protect its airspace.
However, deliveries of these missiles have fallen sharply as US supplies have been depleted due to the war in the Middle East.
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Smoke rises Friday at the scene of a Russian drone attack on a shopping center in Zaporizhia, Ukraine
Ukrainian rescuers at the scene of a Russian attack on a shopping center in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on August 27
People watch smoke rising over a Russian logistics center in Kolpino, outside St. Petersburg, after it was hit by Ukrainian drones on August 23
Four and a half years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, US-mediated negotiations to end the conflict are at a standstill.
Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, has nevertheless visited troops fighting on the Ukrainian front to congratulate them on their “successes” in the eastern Donetsk region.
During the visit, he said the Russian army was now just a few kilometers away from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, cities whose capture is a key goal for the Kremlin.
