Dmitry Peskov confirmed Wednesday what Russian officials had denied a day earlier. CIA Director John Ratcliffe met Russian intelligence officers in Moscow on Tuesday. "All I can tell you is that there have been contacts via the security services," Peskov said. Ratcliffe did not see Vladimir Putin. Putin, he added, "is kept informed of everything without delay."
Nobody has given a fuller account of that meeting than Peskov. He works for Putin.
Flight-trackers broke the story, not Washington. The Washington Post matched a US Air Force C-17A — tail number 07-7181, callsign REACH 4555, its markings stripped down to a US flag — against public flight data on Tuesday. The crew flew in from Riga, sat about eight hours at Vnukovo, and left the same way. Russian officials said that day they knew nothing about the aircraft and had no American meetings scheduled. Moscow reversed itself inside twenty-four hours. No American official has spoken since.
Kyiv made the only concession anyone can document. American officials asked Ukraine to stop striking Moscow, St Petersburg and Russia's northern regions with long-range missiles and drones while the delegation was on Russian soil. The pause ran Monday to Wednesday. Ukrainian forces complied. Ukrainian officials say they were told a high-level delegation was coming — not that the CIA director was on it. The Russians gave up nothing anyone can point to.
