CIA Director Seeking a Foreign Policy Win in Face of Trump’s Humiliation ‘On-all-fronts!’

Jeffrey Silverman, August 29, 2026

In the wake of setbacks over Iran, stalled Middle East diplomacy, and hollow peacemaking claims, Donald Trump is scrambling for any foreign policy win he can claim—real or manufactured.

 

His latest gambit? 

A disastrous last-ditch push to drag Russia into U.S.-led sanctions against Tehran.

Trump holds no winning cards. Any attempt to force or coerce Moscow into enforcing American trade restrictions would demand massive concessions elsewhere—major shifts on European security or relief from existing U.S. sanctions on Russia itself. Moscow has little incentive to compromise over Iran, a key strategic partner.

Yet more may be in play. The Trump administration’s so-called unwavering support for Ukraine looms large. Ukraine is the issue where Moscow wants something from Washington; Iran is the issue where Washington wants something even more urgently from Moscow. That makes CIA Director John Ratcliffe a particularly logical emissary.

Last Ditch Diplomacy

That is not quite a foreign-policy breakthrough. But in the current Washington climate, it may qualify as one 

After all, the administration’s better-known diplomatic operators—Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—have had decidedly mixed results, while Trump’s inner circle has hardly demonstrated a unified or coherent approach to negotiations with either Moscow or Tehran.

If the objective was to explore an arrangement too sensitive, too deniable, or simply too politically awkward for conventional diplomacy, the CIA’s back channel offers obvious advantages.

Ratcliffe, unlike the administration’s more conspicuous envoys, can talk to Russian intelligence without pretending that every conversation constitutes a formal diplomatic initiative. His established relationship with Sergey Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR, makes the choice even less mysterious.

And that may be the point. If Washington wants Moscow to do something about Iran, Moscow presumably wants Washington to do something about Ukraine. The question is whether there is a bargain hiding somewhere between the two—or merely another diplomatic dead end being dressed up as progress.

And the fact that the CIA director was in and out of Moscow in only a few hours makes his journey look even more like a carrier pigeon, i.e., a message-delivery/negotiation mission rather than any semblance of a conventional diplomatic visit.

Timing is Everything!

Washington wants Russia to put pressure on Iran. Moscow wants Washington to address Russian interests over Ukraine. 

The CIA director wasn’t merely delivering an ultimatum. He was carrying a wish list. The timing is critical—and leaves lots of room for speculation. Russia has already pressed Washington over its provision of intelligence and direct help to Ukraine. No one expected a serious response.

Russia does not yield to pressure, blackmail, bullying, or mafia-style leg-breaking.

Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is pushing hard to cut off trade with Iran. Ratcliffe might have been tasked with cutting some kind of deal on that front. Yet there is little reason to believe anything will come of it. We cannot claim with authority that the CIA director was sent specifically to demand Russian compliance with Bessent’s Iran sanctions.

What we do know is this: Bessent launched his campaign on August 24. Ratcliffe made his highly unusual visit to Moscow on August 25. The timing itself is an interesting coincidence—or a possible bargain.

Washington wants Russia to pressure Iran. Moscow wants Washington to address Russian interests on Ukraine. If that was the conversation Ratcliffe carried to Moscow, the CIA director was not merely delivering an ultimatum. He was carrying a shopping list.

Touch-and-Go Landing

The visit was brief—a classic touch-and-go. Flight-tracking data showed a U.S. Air Force C-17A Globemaster III departing the United States, stopping in Latvia, then landing at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport around 10 a.m. local time. The aircraft left again only a few hours later.

Who Ratcliffe met has not been officially disclosed. The obvious candidate is Sergey Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The two men established a direct channel in March 2025, speaking by telephone and agreeing to keep regular contact.

This was no ordinary diplomatic call. A CIA director flying straight into Moscow points to an intelligence and security channel, not conventional negotiation.

The Kremlin has now confirmed that Ratcliffe met Russian intelligence officials, describing the contacts as a “positive development.” Putin was briefed but did not meet him.

CIA Remains Tight Lip

Moscow has little reason to surrender its relationship with Tehran simply to hand President Trump another photograph labelled “Mission Accomplished” 

The great irony may be that Ratcliffe’s Moscow mission has already produced the one thing Washington desperately needs: a success story. The CIA will say nothing. The White House will say nothing.

Moscow, after initially appearing to know nothing about the American aircraft, now concedes that Ratcliffe did indeed meet Russian intelligence officials.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov describes the encounter simply as “contacts between security services” and says that such contacts are a “positive development.” Putin did not meet Ratcliffe, but, according to Peskov, he was briefed on the results.

That is not quite a foreign-policy breakthrough. But in the current Washington climate, it may qualify as one.

Economic Outcasts or Castaways

The timing makes the visit far more interesting than any public explanation. Ratcliffe landed in Moscow one day after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled “Operation Economic Outcast”—Washington’s latest campaign to isolate Iran—while Russia remains one of Tehran’s most important strategic partners. At the same moment, the Russia-Ukraine diplomatic track sits stalled, and Washington has been pressing Kyiv to restrain long-range strikes against Russia.

So the real question is not whether Ratcliffe went to tell Moscow to stop trading with Iran. That would be a thin hand indeed. The sharper question is what Washington might be prepared to put on the table in return.

If Iran is the American problem and Ukraine is the Russian problem, Ratcliffe was an unusually logical messenger. The CIA director can carry conversations that are not quite diplomacy, not quite negotiation, and certainly not material either side wants on the front page the next morning.

Moscow has little reason to surrender its relationship with Tehran simply to hand President Trump another photograph labeled “Mission Accomplished.” Russia has its own interests in Iran, its own calculations on Ukraine, and—most importantly—its own price for anything Washington wants.

That leaves the possibility of a much larger bargain beneath the remarkably small footprint of Ratcliffe’s visit.

Iran for Ukraine? Intelligence for restraint? Sanctions for concessions?

We do not know yet.

And that is precisely what makes the eight-hour Moscow excursion so fascinating. The C-17 arrived, Ratcliffe delivered whatever message he carried, Russian intelligence listened, Putin was briefed, and the aircraft departed.

No flags. No summit. No handshake. No triumphant press conference. Just the intelligence services talking while the politicians insist nothing much happened.

Perhaps nothing did.

But if Washington is truly trying to manufacture a foreign-policy win out of Iran, Ukraine, Russia, and sanctions all at once, Ratcliffe may not have been sent because Trump still held plenty of cards.

He may have been sent because the deck is getting rather thin. And sometimes, when the diplomatic cards run out, the last card left is the one you send by C-17.

 

Jeffrey K. Silverman is a freelance journalist and international development specialist, BSc, MSc, based for 30 years in Georgia and the former Soviet Union

 

https://journal-neo.su/2026/08/29/cia-director-seeking-a-foreign-policy-win-in-face-of-trumps-humiliation-on-all-fronts/

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT (WW3) HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA TO BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

RESTORE THE RIGHTS OF THE RUSSIAN SPEAKING PEOPLE OF "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

RESTITUTE THE ORTHODOX CHURCH PROPERTIES AND RIGHTS

RELEASE THE OPPOSITION MEMBERS FROM PRISON

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE EU.....

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

READ FROM TOP.

PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

 

SEE ALSO: 

unannounced talks? we've know for a week that he was going there....

 

MAY BE THE MESSAGE FROM WASHINGTON TO PUTIN WAS: THIS IS THE MAP WHERE THE WESTERN WEAPONS ARE STORED IN KIEV.... HIT THEM HARD... BOOM.

A massive explosion rocked Kyiv’s Bucha district on August 28, triggering a huge fire, secondary blasts and a mushroom-shaped cloud over the capital region. The warehouse explosion reportedly killed several people and injured six, while more than 200 residents, including children, were evacuated. Ukrainian authorities launched an investigation into the cause, including possible illegal storage of explosives, safety violations or negligence. The blast comes amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and heightened tensions between Russia, Ukraine and NATO.

 

 

Behind CIA Director Ratcliffe’s secret trip to Russia: The Ukraine war spirals out of control

Andre Damon

 

This week, CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a secret trip to Moscow, the first known visit by a CIA director to Russia since before the outbreak of the Ukraine war.

CNN reported Thursday that Ratcliffe delivered a “warning to Russia not to stage an attack in NATO territory.” The ominous conclusion to be drawn is that Washington believes that there is an imminent danger of open warfare between NATO and Russia.

The conditions for a disastrous escalation have been created by a series of Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia, financed and armed by the US and major European NATO powers. In one of its heaviest air raids of the war, Ukraine put roughly 600 drones over the Moscow region overnight on August 15-16, and at least six people were killed across Russia that night.

In the past week Ukraine staged drone attacks that set fire to the Lukoil refinery at Kstovo, 500 miles inside Russia, which produces up to 11 percent of the country’s gasoline, and burned down a Wildberries warehouse in the Tambov region, part of a campaign against logistics hubs Ukraine says supply the war effort. The refinery strikes, the Financial Times reported in July, are guided by American and French targeting intelligence.

At this point the European NATO forces, with Britain, France and Germany in the lead, are hardly attempting to conceal their direct involvement in military operations against Russia.

• On August 24, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, in Kiev, released to Ukraine the secret specifications for the British parts of the Storm Shadow, a long-range missile Ukraine has already fired into Russia, so that Ukraine and France can set up production there.
• The same day, Burnham and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed an agreement making Britain the first foreign country with access to the combat data that trains Ukraine’s strike-guiding artificial intelligence, the Financial Timesreported Monday.
• Also on August 24, the European Commission approved €6.1 billion for Ukrainian purchases of missiles and air defense systems, an installment of the €90 billion war loan it agreed in December.
• These transfers follow the decision of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in May 2025 to lift all range restrictions on German weapons supplied to Ukraine. Germany, second only to the United States in funding the war, has made available nearly €100 billion in aid, has trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers on German soil and, the German weekly Die Zeit reported, has supplied Kiev with satellite imagery and intercepts locating Russian troops, depots and airfields.
• On Thursday, the Financial Times reported that Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain and Poland asked the European Commission to restart work on using some €200 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets, held at the Euroclear depository in Brussels, to fund the war.

There are significant divisions among the European powers over this action. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told the other European powers at the World Economic Forum in January: “You cannot simply confiscate money. That is an act of war.” This statement reflects concerns not only over the massively provocative character of this action but also its impact on the global financial system.

Responding to such concerns within the European political establishment, Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard on Thursday called the seizure of the assets the “way to make sure that Ukraine can defend itself and all of Europe.” The claim that the increasingly provocative escalations by the NATO powers against Russia are of a “defensive” character is absurd. Russia, bogged down in eastern Ukraine for four and a half years, is in no position to overrun Eastern Europe, let alone Germany, France or Britain.

In his first address to parliament as chancellor in May 2025, German Chancellor Merz pledged to build “the strongest conventional army in Europe,” and Berlin has placed military spending beyond 1 percent of economic output outside its constitutional debt brake.

Twice in the 20th century, in the First World War and again in 1941, German imperialism drove east to seize the resources of Russia and Ukraine, and each drive came as the world order of its day was breaking apart. In 1918, Germany occupied Ukraine and ran it as a granary and a base against the young Soviet republic.

The governments of Germany, France and Britain, alongside the United States, have for years been working to instigate and escalate a conflict with Russia. The Maidan coup of February 2014, which overthrew Ukraine’s elected president with the backing of Washington and Berlin, could not be interpreted as anything other than an attempt to integrate Ukraine into a hostile base of operations against Russia. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a desperate and reactionary gamble by Russian President Vladimir Putin, aimed at forcing his “Western partners” into a negotiated settlement of the war they had been instigating since 2014.

In assessing Russian policy, it must be understood that Putin’s hatred of the Bolshevik Revolution, and of anything that tends to legitimize its policies, is a major factor in his interpretation of events. “Imperialism” is a concept that he cannot accept either ideologically or politically, because it undermines the legitimacy of the entire post-Soviet project.

Writing in 1938, on the eve of the Second World War, Leon Trotsky observed that the bourgeoisie “toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe.” The same is true today. Facing mounting social, political and economic crises at home, the European governments see in war a desperate way out. All the relationships and mechanisms that previously prevented war are breaking down, and as desperation and recklessness rise, any incident could spark a full-scale war, or even a nuclear exchange, with little warning.

Nothing can stop this except the unified struggle of the working class throughout Europe and internationally.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/08/29/bihx-a29.html

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT (WW3) HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA TO BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

RESTORE THE RIGHTS OF THE RUSSIAN SPEAKING PEOPLE OF "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

RESTITUTE THE ORTHODOX CHURCH PROPERTIES AND RIGHTS

RELEASE THE OPPOSITION MEMBERS FROM PRISON

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE EU.....

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

READ FROM TOP.

PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

 

SEE ALSO: 

been there, done that... wrong again....

 

The problems with Trump’s ranking of the presidents

BY Aaron Blake

 

President Donald Trump appears preoccupied with slapping his name on things these days. And on Thursday, that involved slapping it atop a ranking of presidents.

Trump shared an image on social media that declared himself “the greatest” president — better than even George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

It’s not clear where the list came from, but it does not seem as though great care went into assembling it. There are a bunch of problems with it — beyond, of course, putting a president with a mid-30s approval rating at the top. (CNN has reached out to the White House about the list.)

And for a president who has growing problems with his conservative base, his posting of this list could confirm some of their reservations about him.

Let’s run through the issues.

FDR, Wilson and Jackson as ‘great’

A number of conservatives cried foul at including this trio alongside Washington, Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, after all, was the father of the New Deal and oversaw the greatest expansion of the federal government in US history.

Woodrow Wilson might engender even more distaste on the rightfor presiding over his own expansion of government, including enacting the federal income tax. Conservative columnist George Will has said Wilson “ruined the 20th century.”

Andrew Jackson is one of two presidents Democrats used to name their fundraising dinners after — though they moved away from that in recent years due Jackson’s owning of slaves and treatment of Native Americans.

And Trump seems to want a mulligan on at least one of them. By Friday morning, he posted a different graphic that demoted Wilson from “great.” In the new one, Wilson is listed among five presidents who “broke” America.

Coolidge as ‘below average’

For conservatives, this is basically the inverse of ranking Wilson as “great.”

Calvin Coolidge is considered a vastly underappreciated president on the right, and even a conservative icon. He’s lionized for his fierce opposition to the kind of big government progressivism that marked Wilson’s and FDR’s presidencies.

Some even credit “Silent Cal” for the rise of modern conservatism.

Andrew Johnson as ‘average’

Johnson is often considered among America’s worst presidents, owing in large part to his incompetent handling of Reconstruction after the Civil War. He was also impeached.

The Siena Research Institute Survey of US Presidents, which frequently surveys experts, has ranked Johnson dead last among the presidents for the last 20 years.

It would be interesting to know why Trump might see Johnson as, in fact, not so bad.

McKinley as ‘average’

It would seem William McKinley has been demoted in Trump’s mind. That’s because the president spent much of 2025 talking about how “great” McKinley was and hailing him as an example of how tariffs can make America great.

Trump even restored McKinley’s name to a mountain in Alaska because he was such “a great president.”

“McKinley was a great president who never got credit,” Trump added in July 2025.

Now he’s among those apparently not giving him credit.

Grant as a ‘failure’

While Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency is not as well-regarded as his time leading the Union to victory in the Civil War — and he certainly wasn’t a natural politician — “failure” seems rather harsh.

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas in a 2022 op-ed labeled Grant “one of the greatest civil-rights presidents in our nation’s history” and accused liberals of besmirching the reputation of an “American hero.”

“This sloppy and slanderous history thankfully has been reassessed in recent years, for Grant deserves to stand forever alongside Lincoln and Washington as one of America’s indispensable men,” Cotton wrote.

Cotton may not like seeing Trump participate in such treachery.

The missing presidents

One of the biggest problems with the graphic is that it doesn’t bother to rank a bunch of presidents.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/28/politics/trump-presidential-ranking-maga

 

READ FROM TOP.

PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

 

WE UNDERSTAND THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP RANKS HIS WEEKLY TURDS ON A PRESIDENTIAL CHART AS WELL.