President Donald Trump dismissed the possibility of a Russian assault on NATO on August 27, 2026. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, he said his own dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin had left him convinced the alliance faces no such threat — even as U.S. intelligence warnings pointed the other way.
“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 such a warning in Moscow days earlier, he declined. “I don’t want to comment on that,” Trump said, “but they’re not going to attack.”
The administration never announced Ratcliffe’s August 25 flight to the Russian capital. Word of it emerged that day, once a U.S. Air Force C-17 was seen touching down at Vnukovo airport and a diplomatic motorcade rolled through the city. No agency chief had made the trip since then-CIA Director William Burns warned the Kremlin in November 2021 against sending troops into Ukraine — a warning Russia answered three months later by invading. For Ratcliffe, it was a first known visit to Russia as CIA director.
What the CIA Chief Carried to Moscow
Ratcliffe reportedly delivered two messages to his Russian counterparts. NATO member states were not to be attacked, and Iran was to lose Russian economic and military support while Washington works to squeeze Tehran’s finances. A further warning followed: more U.S. sanctions would come if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed to shipping traffic. Kyiv, informed that a U.S. delegation was heading to Moscow, was asked to hold off on strikes against Moscow and St. Petersburg for the duration of the Americans’ stay, a senior Ukrainian official said.
Marek Kohv, head of the Security and Resilience Program at the International Center for Defense and Security, wrote in a September 2 opinion column for the Kyiv Independent that U.S. intelligence has been investigating whether Moscow assisted attacks on CIA facilities, adding that “the latter remains unconfirmed.” Russia, he wrote, has shared information useful for striking U.S. assets in the Middle East.
Behind the trip sits an intelligence picture far darker than the president’s public assessment. Russia had slipped into an increasingly weak position in Ukraine, U.S. officials concluded. That weakness, in their reading, is precisely what might drive the Kremlin to move against NATO — raising the price of supporting Kyiv until a settlement is struck on Moscow’s terms. Putin likely believes Washington will not risk another conflict because it would collide with American public opinion, according to one recent assessment. No indication surfaced that an attack was imminent, yet sabotage, cyber or drone operations, and even a land grab in Europe have all figured in the warnings of recent weeks.
A narrower menu of provocations appeared in earlier assessments — cyber and hybrid operations on alliance soil, falling short of conventional war. The goal, in that reading, is not to start a war but to test how united NATO remains and how willing the Trump administration is to defend its allies. As evidence, officials cited drones entering Romanian airspace, a Russian missile that crossed into Poland on July 30 and a rise in suspected sabotage and hacking across Europe.
The same September 2 column noted that a large U.S.-led NATO exercise took place around Kaliningrad in August, combining American and Norwegian fighters, electronic-warfare and surveillance aircraft, aerial refueling, Polish ground forces and NATO command-and-control assets. Kohv argued that current U.S. military activity on NATO’s eastern flank does not suggest Washington considers the Russia threat irrelevant.
Article 5 of the NATO treaty sets the expectation that members defend one another. The United States invoked it after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Reporting on leaked intelligence suggested Putin could test the alliance with a limited assault within the next few years.
The president has already worked to lower the temperature. Sitting down with radio host Glenn Beck for an August 26 interview, he described the trip as semi-routine, rejected suggestions that it involved either a NATO threat or Iran sanctions, and turned the conversation toward ending the war in Ukraine, saying something might come of Ratcliffe’s visit.
Kohv’s September 2 column also floated a more hopeful interpretation of the journey. “If the CIA director went to Moscow to warn Russia against action in the Baltic region, that should be read positively,” he wrote, saying it would indicate Washington knows what Moscow may be considering and is prepared to respond. He cautioned that only speculation is possible about the real purpose of the visit.
Moscow Brushes Off the Reports
“A lot of such scare stories are being published right now. Of course, they have nothing to do with reality,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at his daily briefing on Thursday, August 27. Russia, he added, is the target of an aggressive policy from European countries. Ratcliffe met Russian intelligence officials but did not see Putin, he said. On the war, Peskov said Moscow would prefer to achieve its aims peacefully; absent that option, it is pressing on with what it calls its special military operation. Ukrainian calls for direct talks between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have been repeatedly rebuffed by Russia, which demands instead that Kyiv withdraw from the eastern Donbas region.
In remarks carried by state media, Russia’s foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, confirmed the meeting and said there was nothing unusual about it. The two men discussed matters within the remit of intelligence services, he said, work he described as a rather delicate and specialized business.
Europe’s spy services do not share Washington’s alarm. There is no evidence Russia is preparing a conventional attack on NATO or a Baltic state, European officials have said, and nothing has since changed that assessment. Finnish President Alexander Stubb put it on the record: “I simply see neither evidence nor facts to support it.” Romania’s defense minister, Radu Miruta, said he did not think Russia had any intention of attacking a NATO member.
The War Grinds On
The fighting did not stop, whatever passed between the intelligence chiefs. Missiles and drones battered 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, and said it hit war-related sites: industry, oil refineries, logistics hubs and port infrastructure. Drones also struck three major distribution centers, destroying storage operated by the toy retailer Budynok Ihrashok and the confectioner Roshen and damaging a site run by the electronics chain Comfy.
Four and a half years into the full-scale invasion, Ukraine remains desperately short of U.S.-made Patriot interceptors capable of knocking down Russian ballistic missiles. Ukrainian forces hit a Russian Tu-95MS missile carrier at the Engels base, Zelenskyy said on Friday, August 28, crediting the operation to the Alpha unit of Ukraine’s SBU domestic security service. In the south, Kherson regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin urged residents to leave — especially families with children and the elderly — saying attacks on critical infrastructure are intensifying by the day.
Trump and Putin last met in person in Alaska on August 15, 2025, and their most recent known phone call came on July 4, 2026.
Ratcliffe is among the highest-ranking American officials to set foot in Russia since the invasion began in 2022, and the first senior Trump administration official to travel to Moscow in months.
The strikes have not let up since. Russian attacks killed 12 people in Kyiv on September 1, a sixth consecutive night of bombardment, and Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, said peace talks could begin soon. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov attended the Group of 20 meeting in North Carolina on August 31.
