John Ratcliffe's Secret Mission to Moscow: Don't Attack NATO, and You Had Better Strike a Deal While a Deal Is Still Possible, Mr. Putin

Ratcliffe told the head of the FSB that Russia must not attack NATO.

Is that a real fear? Yes, for several reason. First, intelligence warned of an attack on Poland by Russia, with Russia hoping to make Poland back away from its support of Ukraine.

And then months after that, a Russian missile fell in Poland. The missile hit an empty field and killed no one, but it seems likely that it was intended as a threat, especially since it had been predicted by intel sources.

And now their are fresh reports that Russia is planning another provocation attack.

Second: Russia is losing this war and one of the most basic reactions to losing on one front is to open another front. The CIA seems to fear that Putin will become desperate and escalate the situation to delay his defeat.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe's personal visit to Moscow this week saw him warn Russia against any strikes on NATO nations, multiple outlets have reported.

Ratcliffe visited Russia this week and met with intelligence officials, but not President Vladimir Putin. The meeting came amid reported concerns from Washington that Russia could attack one of the Baltic States, all of which are in NATO, according to the Wall Street Journal.

That wasn't the only point of the trip.

The other objective was to deliver the CIA's assessment that, despite the US previously figuring that Russia would eventually win the war due to their great advantage in population and war materiel, the CIA now believes that Russia will lose the war, given the disastrous 2026 Russian spring and summer offensives, which are hardly worthy of the name.

Ratcliffe urged Russia to start seriously negotiating for a peace deal before Russia suffers military and economic damage that could take generations to repair.

For those of you who have, like me, been reading about the Ukraine-Russia war, and wondered if the news of Russia's bloody failure was just Ukrainian propaganda: It appears not. The CIA broadly confirms what we've been hearing from Ukrainian sources and independent analysts.

C.I.A. Chief Delivered Bleak Assessment of Russia's War in Secretive Moscow Visit

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.

This is discussed a lot -- Putin is almost like Hitler in seeming to believe that he's winning this. People attribute this to the fact that generals and staffers who give Putin bad news tend to exit tall buildings from high windows.

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.

...

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.

Ukraine is parlaying that drone mastery into more aid. They're striking deals with many countries, including the US, and trading their hard-won expertise at drone warfare and technology for additional weapons (including more drones and components for drones).

Drones have replaced artillery as the new king of the battlefield. They're the weapon responsible for the most battle deaths, knocking artillery off its long-held bloody throne.

The future of warfare will be, for good or for ill, all about drones and, crucially, anti-drone technology. (Not all counter-drone weapons are so high tech.)

America must be able to destroy drones if we want to keep our other advantages. (And the Ukraine war has shown that US weapons systems are very good and much better than Russian, and presumably Chinese, systems. In fact, most of NATO's weapons are superior to Russia's.)

US drone "mothership" carries other drones.

Related: Trump announced the US had cleared the sea lanes of Strait of America of all Iranian mines.

Among the weapons deployed to destroy the mines? Underwater drones.

US officials had confirmed the essential claim two days earlier. They said underwater drones had identified more than 100 suspected mines in recent months.

Private contractors then disposed of the devices, the officials said. President Donald Trump warned that American forces would destroy any Iranian vessel caught laying new mines.

Also in the fight: the surface sea drone, the Corsair:

On July 12, 2026, three Saronic Corsair one-way attack uncrewed surface vessels struck a submarine and a ship maintenance facility at Iran's Bandar Abbas Naval Base, in what U.S. Central Command described as the first American combat employment of sea drones.

The strike settled a question this profile left open in June, when the Corsair's offensive role existed in acquisition documents and company material with no combat instance behind it. It settled much less about the platform. The approach was reported as low-speed and uncontested, the launch point, transit distance and warhead were never disclosed, and the released video ends at the explosions.

Thirty-four days earlier the same vessel class had recovered two downed Army aviators near the Strait of Hormuz. Behind both events sits a company that has since selected Brownsville, Texas for a shipyard costing more than $3 billion, launched its first 52-foot Mirage, and carries a $9.25 billion valuation against roughly $200 million in estimated 2025 revenue.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:30 PM

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