The head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergei Naryshkin said in a comment published today that he had a telephone conversation with CIA Director John Ratcliffe and that the two had agreed to maintain direct telephone contact at any time. The news was reported by the “Reuters“ agency, BTA reports.
“I had a phone conversation with my American colleague and we reserved the opportunity to call each other at any time to discuss issues of interest to us“, Naryshkin told Russian state television journalist Pavel Zarubin.
The last known contact between the two dates back to March 2025, according to Russian media.
The SVR and the CIA - heirs to a long-standing rivalry between the KGB and Western intelligence services - have maintained tense relations, especially since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The two agencies have even resorted to open campaigns to recruit agents from the opposite side, notes “Reuters“.
The agency recalls that the SVR and its predecessor - the First Main Directorate of the KGB - are behind some of the most notorious cases of espionage in American history. Among them are Julius Rosenberg, who passed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, as well as former US intelligence officers Robert Hansen and Aldridge Ames, who provided Moscow with thousands of classified documents.