CIA Director John Ratcliffe proposed a trilateral summit between Trump, Putin and Zelensky during a covert trip to Moscow. Zelensky confirmed the US briefed Kyiv on the talks.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe proposed organizing a trilateral meeting between US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a covert visit to Moscow, aimed at moving the war toward an end. That's according to sources familiar with the talks.
Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow by a covert route, aboard an unmarked C-17 military cargo plane that flew out of Latvia. In Moscow, he met with Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergey Naryshkin and FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov. According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, Ratcliffe did not meet directly with Putin — the Russian president was only briefed on the substance of the talks. The visit was partly meant to determine whether the heads of Russia's intelligence services could help move Putin toward resuming US-mediated negotiations.
On Friday, August 28, Zelensky confirmed that Ukraine had received information from the US about Ratcliffe's talks in Moscow. "We received information from the American side about the meetings in Moscow," the Ukrainian president said, adding that he valued the coordination of steps and the fact that the US is advancing a fairly realistic vision. The Trump administration has floated the trilateral summit idea before — Zelensky has backed it, but Putin has rejected it each time.
Despite the diplomatic activity, Ukrainian officials remain skeptical of Putin's intentions. According to Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of the President's Office, intelligence suggests Putin is preparing several scenarios for a large-scale offensive, with the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions identified as key targets. Trump himself called Ratcliffe's visit "semi-routine," but confirmed its purpose was to move the war closer to an end.
Volunteers Support Ukraine is closely following the diplomatic process around ending the war and continues to help people affected by the fighting, in whatever way its available resources allow.
