Both the WSJ and Politico seem to have confirmed what most people seemed to have assumed – that Ratcliffe’s trip to Moscow this week was to warn Russia about its actions threatening NATO allies in Europe and in support of Iran. See Politico’s post.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.
CIA chief warned Russia against attacks on NATO allies in secret Moscow visit https://t.co/6VaIl9kSq0— POLITICO (@politico) August 26, 2026
In the case of Europe, this comes after a string of Russian asymmetric, and kinetic, actions in NATO states – now regular drone incursions, plots uncovered to kill leaders of European military defense companies, suspicious attacks on Western arms factories and arms dumps, and even open threats by the Kremlin against the UK after London (and Paris on SCALP) opted to supply the blue prints for its Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine.This past week also saw a major NATO air operation around the Baltic Sea, presumably in response to specific intelligence around some Russian escalation planned around the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.The context seems to be that Putin’s war in Ukraine is not going well, as Ukraine has stabilized the front lines and is now increasingly successful in taking the war to Russia via deep strike drone attacks on refineries and on line retailer warehouses in Russia. Putin is worried and is escalating to try and force NATO to pull support for Ukraine and force Ukraine into a peace on his terms.All this raises a number of questions:First, what was the specific intel that the US received on Russia’s plans to attack NATO, or escalate in Ukraine, that prompted the Trump administration – that has typically given the Putin regime a pass/benefit of the doubt on all things Ukraine-related – to dispatch Ratcliffe to Moscow?
