John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, made a secretive visit to Moscow this week to privately share his bleak assessment of the state of the Russian war against Ukraine, and to urge the Russians to cut a deal before their military and economic situation gets worse, current and former officials said.
Mr. Ratcliffe delivered the message to Aleksandr V. Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s F.S.B. intelligence service, and made no threats about potential consequences for the Russian side should President Vladimir V. Putin ignore the C.I.A. director’s assessment and choose to continue fighting.
C.I.A. analysts have long questioned whether Mr. Putin’s advisers have given him honest assessments of the war’s trajectory and toll.
The C.I.A. has long maintained communications channels with the F.S.B. and Russia’s foreign intelligence service, which is known as the S.V.R.
Officials said Mr. Ratcliffe’s intelligence channel with Bortnikov runs parallel to separate channels that President Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, have established with other senior advisers to Mr. Putin.
Some officials said they hoped that Mr. Putin, a former intelligence officer himself, would see a message from the C.I.A. director as more urgent and credible than communications through normal diplomatic channels.
For much of last year, Mr. Trump and some of his top advisers appeared to hold the belief that a Russian battlefield victory over Ukraine was inevitable because of Russia’s larger population and its nuclear arsenal.
But the Russians have suffered massive losses, and their battlefield gains have stalled.
It is not clear whether Mr. Ratcliffe’s message presaged any change in U.S. policy toward Russia or Ukraine.
Mr. Ratcliffe’s visit was the latest effort by the Trump administration to breathe new life into stalled negotiations. It has become increasingly clear that Ukraine is not going to give up its fight in the east, even with reduced U.S. military support.
Given what he presented as the bleak military and economic reality for Russia, Mr. Ratcliffe told Mr. Bortnikov that he believed it was time for Moscow to engage in serious negotiations to end the war.
Since Mr. Trump’s return to office, the United States has scaled back its military support to the Ukrainians, forcing them to rely more heavily on European partners.
The C.I.A. has maintained its close intelligence partnerships with the Ukrainians, which began more than a decade ago.
The private message that Mr. Ratcliffe delivered to Mr. Bortnikov about Ukraine echoed some of the director’s public statements.
Last month, Mr. Ratcliffe spoke out pointedly about Russian troop losses during the war, and Moscow’s inability to advance on the battlefield. He noted that the life expectancy of a Russian soldier on the front lines was less than 35 minutes.
And he added that Russia had gained only about 1 percent of Ukraine’s total territory in the 18 months since he became C.I.A. director, a development he attributed to Ukraine’s “mastery” of drone technology.
Before Mr. Ratcliffe met with Mr. Bortnikov in Moscow, he spoke with his Ukrainian counterparts, assuring them that he would be exploring Russian positions, not making concessions on behalf of the Ukrainians.
European diplomats believe there may be an opening to secure a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in the coming winter months, given the largely stalled Russian offensive in the Donbas, and because of Ukraine’s ability to continue imposing deep costs on Russia with its drone warfare.
Some of those European officials have been pressing the Trump administration to add a national security official to the mix of officials pressing the Russians for a peace deal, someone who could deliver the kind of tough message Mr. Ratcliffe delivered this week.
The Ukrainians have long viewed Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner as too close to the Russians. They view Mr. Ratcliffe, a longtime Russia hawk, as a potentially more neutral mediator.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly used Mr. Ratcliffe as a discreet messenger.
In January, he became the first cabinet-level official to visit Venezuela after U.S. special operation forces seized President Nicolás Maduro.
In May, he traveled to Cuba, giving its leaders a bleak assessment of the state of the Cuban economy in the face of a U.S. oil blockade. He urged the country to make a series of sweeping political and economic changes before the situation got worse.
Direct contacts between U.S. and Russian spy chiefs have been sporadic in recent years.
In November 2021, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director in the Biden administration, met face to face in Moscow with Mr. Bortnikov and other top Russian officials to warn Mr. Putin against launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A year later, in November 2022, Turkey hosted a face-to-face meeting in Ankara between Mr. Burns and Sergei Naryshkin, the leader of Russia’s foreign intelligence service. U.S. intelligence agencies had intercepted Russian communications about the possible use of a nuclear device by the Russians to slow Ukrainian advances in that fall’s counteroffensive. Mr. Burns warned Mr. Naryshkin of serious consequences if the Russians acted on the alleged threat.
The Turkish hosts wanted the meeting to be the start of a lasting channel of direct communication between Washington and Moscow to reduce tensions. But the C.I.A. was angry at Moscow when, after the meeting, the Russian side made it public. Mr. Burns and Mr. Naryshkin did not have a second face-to-face meeting, though they continued to communicate occasionally by phone.
After Mr. Trump took office last year, Mr. Ratcliffe and Mr. Bortnikov worked out the details of a prisoner swap, but this week’s face-to-face meeting in Moscow was their first.
