John Ratcliffe, diplomat, chief spy or a bit of both? A month after a highly publicized trip to Moscow, the director of the CIA, the American foreign intelligence agency, met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday September 21 in Ireland, Reuters has learned.
The two men spoke on the tarmac at Shannon Airport, near the plane which then transported the Ukrainian leader to New York, where he is to both meet his American counterpart Donald Trump and attend a highly anticipated UN General Assembly.
Zelensky and the head of the CIA on the tarmac
A face-to-face which seems to be a continuation of John Ratcliffe’s trip to Russia on August 24. He did not then meet Vladimir Putin, but the head of the CIA was able to discuss with his counterparts from the Russian intelligence agencies during this highly commented trip, which was a first since the start of the large-scale war in Ukraine in 2022.
But nothing, other than rumors about possible warnings sent by John Ratcliffe to the Russian authorities, had filtered out from this visit to Moscow.
Ditto for the discussions between the head of the CIA and Volodymyr Zelensky. The two anonymous sources who confirmed this meeting to Reuters refused to detail the content of the exchanges.
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Cover image: © France 24
Could it have been an unexpected meeting? After all, “Shannon Airport is strategic and often the last stopover in Europe before crossing the Atlantic to the United States. American military personnel are often present there in large numbers, so it is an ideal setting for a ‘chance’ meeting”, underlines Dafydd Townley, specialist in the United States and national security issues at the University of Portsmouth.
For this expert, however, there are “rarely coincidences at this level, as they say”.
What game is the head of the CIA playing? He seems to have made a very sudden and prominent appearance on the scene of the conflict in Ukraine. However, “diplomacy depends on Marco Rubio’s State Department, the president and his envoys, like Steve Witkoff. The CIA does play a role, but it is above all to collect information that could be useful for diplomats,” assures Dafydd Townley.
A spy-diplomat tradition
There is, however, a long tradition of senior intelligence officials conducting behind-the-scenes negotiations. “The Mossad, for example, was very active diplomatically before the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 to improve relations with the Gulf countries,” underlines Daniel Lomas, specialist in intelligence services at the University of Birmingham.
In the United States, it would also “not be the first time that American intelligence officials participated in or led shuttle diplomacy. George Tenet, the director of the CIA at the time of Bill Clinton, had personally negotiated with the Israelis and the Palestinians”, underlines Kevin Riehle, specialist in intelligence services at Brunel University in London.
Having the spy chief in the room has significant diplomatic advantages. First, “discussions with the director of the CIA can be more discreet than with Marco Rubio. When the Secretary of State travels for an official trip, there is a whole protocol and the media follows it closely,” notes Andrew Gawthorpe, specialist in American foreign policy at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. For certain sensitive subjects – and there is no shortage of them in the Ukrainian file – the Russians or the Ukrainians may feel more comfortable with a secrecy professional.
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“He is also someone whose warnings can be taken more seriously,” adds Andrew Gawthorpe. For this expert, the head of the CIA “expresses himself with a particular authority linked to his functions and direct access to information”. In a Russia where the influence of security services like the FSB is very strong, the words of John Ratcliffe may carry more weight than those of Steve Witkoff or Jared Kushner.
And perhaps not only among Russians. “The diplomatic record of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner has been widely criticized – both in the Ukrainian and Iranian cases – and Ukrainian officials can have more confidence in John Ratcliffe who, in addition, is considered close to Donald Trump,” maintains Daniel Lomas. Nor is his reputation tarnished by accusations of pro-Russian sympathies.
Warning signed by the CIA
It remains to be seen how John Ratcliffe fits into the diplomatic system put in place by the Trump administration. At a minimum, the head of the CIA is the man of firm messages, believe the experts interviewed by France 24.
Thus, his trip to Russia was analyzed by the American media as a warning from Washington against the possible Russian temptation to threaten a NATO country more directly.
By meeting Volodymyr Zelensky “unexpectedly”, John Ratcliffe sent another message to Vladimir Putin: “it’s a way of saying that despite the uncertainties surrounding American military aid to Ukraine, collaboration in the field of intelligence continues”, assures Andrew Gawthorpe.
It is also possible that the head of the CIA received a broader mandate to try to unblock the diplomatic situation. There are then, according to Dafydd Townley, two options: either everyone swims in their own diplomatic lane in a coordinated manner to bring the Russians and Ukrainians to negotiate. Either it’s a kind of competition where the first to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough receives congratulations from the president.
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However, John Ratcliffe’s discussions in Russia, then with the Ukrainian president, risk making the American diplomatic effort more opaque. “There is very little democratic control of the diplomatic action of the head of the CIA,” warns Dafydd Townley.
If Marco Rubio must be publicly accountable to the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee, this is not the case for the director of the CIA. The Intelligence Committee has little or no interest in diplomacy. And then in American history and especially in the south of the continent, the CIA did not really bring peace, quite the contrary…
