President Donald Trump brushed aside the idea that Russia might attack NATO, telling reporters in the Oval Office on August 27, 2026, that his own dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin had left him confident the alliance faces no such threat — even as US intelligence warnings pointed the other way.
Asked whether Putin had given him that assurance, Trump said: “He’s not going to be attacking a NATO territory.”
Pressed on whether CIA Director John Ratcliffe had delivered such a warning in Moscow days earlier, the president declined to comment, but he repeated that Russia would not strike.
Ratcliffe’s August 25 flight to the Russian capital was never announced by the administration. A US Air Force jet seen touching down at a Moscow airport, together with a diplomatic motorcade making its way through the city, gave the trip away that day. No agency chief had gone to Russia since then-CIA Director William Burns cautioned the Kremlin in November 2021 against sending troops into Ukraine — an invasion followed three months later — and for Ratcliffe it was a first known visit in the role.
What the CIA Chief Carried to Moscow
A warning against any attack on NATO member states was reportedly what Ratcliffe delivered to his Russian counterparts, along with pressure on Moscow to end its economic and military support for Iran while Washington works to squeeze Tehran’s finances. He also warned that more US sanctions would follow if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed to shipping traffic. Kyiv had been told a US delegation was on its way, and a senior Ukrainian official said a request then came in for Ukraine to pause its strikes for as long as the Americans remained in the country.
Behind the trip sits an intelligence picture far bleaker than the president’s public assessment. Moscow’s standing in Ukraine had grown increasingly weak, US officials concluded — and that very fragility, in their reading, could tip Russia toward action against NATO, driving up the cost of backing Kyiv and forcing a settlement on Moscow’s terms. Putin likely believes Washington will not risk another conflict because it would collide with American public opinion, one recent assessment found. Nothing indicated an attack was imminent, though sabotage, cyber or drone operations, and even a land grab in Europe had all surfaced as possibilities over weeks of warnings.
A narrower menu of provocations appeared in earlier assessments: cyber and hybrid operations on alliance soil, falling short of conventional war, whose purpose was thought to be testing NATO’s cohesion and the Trump administration’s willingness to defend allies rather than starting a war. Drones that entered Romanian airspace, a Russian missile crossing into Poland on July 30 and a growing number of suspected sabotage and hacking incidents across Europe were among the examples officials cited.
Members are expected to defend one another under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which the United States invoked after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Putin could mount a limited assault to test the alliance within the next few years, reporting on leaked intelligence suggested.
The president had already worked to cool things down. Radio host Glenn Beck interviewed him on August 26, and Trump described the trip as semi-routine, dismissed the notion that a NATO threat or Iran sanctions had anything to do with it, and turned the conversation toward ending the war in Ukraine, saying something might come of Ratcliffe’s visit.
On September 2, Trump traced the war’s origins to the last presidential election: “It’s a war that should have never happened. If the election weren’t rigged in 2020, that war would have never happened.” Of the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, he said, “There’s tremendous animosity between the two presidents, tremendous animosity.”
Moscow Brushes Off the Reports
“A lot of such scare stories are being published right now,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. His daily briefing on Thursday, August 27, was also where he insisted the accounts bear no relation to reality and cast Russia as the target of an aggressive policy from European countries. Ratcliffe met Russian intelligence officials but did not see Putin, he said. Asked about the war, Peskov described a preference in Moscow for achieving its aims peacefully, saying that absent that option it is pressing on with what it calls its special military operation. Kyiv’s withdrawal from the eastern Donbas region is the demand Russia has made instead, repeatedly rebuffing Ukrainian calls for direct talks between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
State media carried remarks from Sergei Naryshkin, Russia’s foreign intelligence chief, in which he confirmed the meeting. There was nothing unusual about it, he said, describing the subject matter the two men took up as falling within the remit of intelligence services — delicate and special, in his words.
Washington’s alarm is not shared by spy services elsewhere on the continent. There is no risk of a Russian attack on European NATO countries in the view of European agencies, a senior European Union official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, and that assessment has not shifted.
The War Grinds On
The fighting never let up, whatever passed between the intelligence chiefs. Russian missiles and drones pounded Ukrainian cities overnight into Thursday, August 27, and explosions rolled across Kyiv through the morning. The Russian Defense Ministry described the barrage, launched after nightfall on Wednesday, August 26, as 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 facilities operated by a toy retailer and a candy maker while damaging one run by an electronics retailer.
Four and a half years into the full-scale invasion, Ukraine remains desperately short of US-made Patriot interceptors capable of knocking down Russian ballistic missiles. On Friday, August 28, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces hit a Russian Tu-95MS missile carrier at the Engels base, 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 Alaska on August 15, 2025, and their most recent known phone call came in June 2026.
Another sit-down hinges on Moscow’s readiness to negotiate, Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on September 2. “He’d do it. I want it, but I want to do it when we’re ready to do a peace deal,” the president said of a summit with Putin, adding, “I want to do it when that war is ending, and I think we will.” He also said, “We want to have good relationship with Russia, Ukraine, with everybody. Be great for business.”
Reporting published September 3 said the president is ready to meet Putin only to sign an agreement on a complete cessation of the war, and that he had called the war in Ukraine “stupid.”
Ratcliffe ranks among the highest-ranking American officials to set foot in Russia since the invasion began in 2022, and he is the first senior Trump administration official to travel to Moscow in months.