President Donald Trump waved away the prospect of a Russian assault on NATO on August 27, 2026, telling reporters in the Oval Office that his own dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin had convinced him the alliance faces no such threat — even as US intelligence warnings pointed the other way.

“He’s not going to be attacking a NATO territory,” Trump said when asked whether Putin had given him that assurance. Pressed on whether CIA Director John Ratcliffe had carried such a warning to Moscow days earlier, the president declined to comment but insisted again that Russia would not strike.

Ratcliffe flew to the Russian capital on August 25, on a trip the administration never announced. It came to light that day after a US Air Force jet was spotted landing at a Moscow airport and a diplomatic motorcade moved through the city. The visit was Ratcliffe’s first known trip to Russia as CIA director and the first by any agency chief since then-CIA Director William Burns warned the Kremlin in November 2021 against sending troops into Ukraine. Russia invaded three months later.

What the CIA Chief Carried to Moscow

According to people familiar with the matter, Ratcliffe told his Russian counterparts not to attack NATO member states and pressed Moscow to cut off economic and military support for Iran as Washington works to squeeze Tehran’s finances. He also warned that further US sanctions would follow if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed to shipping traffic. Ukraine, told that a US delegation was heading to Moscow, received a request to pause its strikes while the Americans were in the country, a senior Ukrainian official said.

The intelligence picture behind the trip is bleaker than the president’s public assessment. US officials concluded that Russia had slipped into an increasingly weak position in Ukraine — a vulnerability that could push it toward action against NATO to raise the cost of backing Kyiv and force a settlement on Moscow’s terms. One recent assessment found Putin likely believes Washington will not risk another conflict because it would collide with American public opinion. Nothing indicated an attack was imminent, but weeks of warnings raised the prospect of sabotage, cyber or drone operations, or even a land grab in Europe.

Earlier assessments sketched a narrower menu of provocations Putin might authorize on alliance soil — cyber and hybrid operations that stop short of conventional war — aimed less at igniting a war than at probing NATO’s cohesion and the Trump administration’s appetite for defending allies. Officials pointed to drones entering Romanian airspace, a Russian missile that crossed into Poland on July 30 and a rise in suspected sabotage and hacking across Europe. Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, members are expected to defend one another; the United States invoked it after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Reporting on leaked intelligence suggested Putin could test the alliance with a limited assault within the next few years.

Trump had already tried to lower the temperature. In an August 26 interview with radio host Glenn Beck, he called the trip semi-routine, rejected suggestions that it involved either a NATO threat or Iran sanctions and steered the conversation toward ending the war in Ukraine, saying something might come of Ratcliffe’s visit.

Moscow Brushes Off the Reports

“A lot of such scare stories are being published right now,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at his daily briefing on Thursday, August 27, adding that the accounts bear no relation to reality and that Russia is the target of an aggressive policy from European countries. He said Ratcliffe met Russian intelligence officials but did not see Putin. On the war, Peskov said Moscow would prefer to achieve its aims peacefully but, without that option, is pressing on with what it calls its special military operation. Russia has repeatedly rebuffed Ukrainian calls for direct talks between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demanding instead that Kyiv withdraw from the eastern Donbas region.

Russia’s foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, confirmed the meeting in remarks carried by state media, saying there was nothing unusual about it and that the two men discussed matters within the remit of intelligence services — a subject he called delicate and special.

Europe’s spy services do not share Washington’s alarm. A senior European Union official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said European agencies see no risk of a Russian attack on European NATO countries and that the assessment has not shifted.

The War Grinds On

Whatever passed between the intelligence chiefs, the shooting did not stop. Russia hammered Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones 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.

Ukraine remains desperately short of US-made Patriot interceptors capable of knocking down Russian ballistic missiles, four and a half years into the full-scale invasion. On Friday, August 28, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces hit a Russian Tu-95MS missile carrier at the Engels base, in an operation he credited to the Alpha unit of Ukraine’s SBU domestic security service. In the south, Kherson regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin urged residents — especially families with children and the elderly — to leave, 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. Ratcliffe is among the highest-ranking American officials to set foot in Russia since the invasion began in 2022, and the first senior Trump administration official to travel to Moscow in months.