CIA Director John Ratcliffe arrived in Moscow yesterday to hold "contact between secret services" without meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today, quoted by Agence France-Presse, BTA reports.
"There were contacts between the secret services, but no meeting with the Russian president took place," Peskov told journalists, including AFP, describing these contacts as "positive", but refusing to comment on the topics discussed.
The spokesman pointed out that "it is still too early to say to what extent this will affect the process of bringing (Russian-American) relations out of the crisis they are in". No other contacts are planned for now, he confirmed.
Washington has not yet commented on John Ratcliffe's visit to Moscow - the first known since he headed the CIA last year.
According to data from the flight tracking site "Flightradar24", a US military plane took off from the Latvian capital Riga yesterday morning and later landed in the Russian capital, then returned in the evening.
The last known visit by a CIA director to Russia was that of William Burns - from November 2021, before the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022.