Moscow Spy Chief Hints at Upcoming Meeting With CIA Head (2025)

Sergey Naryshkin, the director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), said he held a phone call with CIA Director John Ratcliffe and hinted at a forthcoming face-to-face meeting sometime soon.

Speaking to Russian state media TASS, Naryshkin said “I had a telephone conversation with my colleague, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]. It was a very constructive conversation. So I do not rule out the possibility of a meeting in the near future.”

Ratcliffe and Naryshkin held a phone call on March 11 – the first contact of its kind in two years – where the two agreed to maintain “regular contact” to “[facilitate] international stability and security and reducing confrontation in relationships between Moscow and Washington,” the SVR press office said at the time, according to an earlier TASS report.

Weeks after the call with Naryshkin, Ratcliffe said at a March 25 Senate hearing that “Ukrainians will fight with their bare hands if forced to accept an unjust peace.”

While the scope of the latest call between Ratcliffe and Naryshkin was not disclosed, it came amid Washington’s declared red line for Kyiv and Moscow to accept its peace proposal, where it threatens to walk out if no progress is made.

US President Donald Trump claimed it has been easier to deal with Moscow and blamed Kyiv for the lack of progress. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance stated that an “explicit proposal” has been issued to both. However, the exact terms presented to Kyiv and Moscow remain unclear.

Reports speculate that the proposal includes clauses on US recognition of Crimea as Russian, reversing its longstanding policy after Russia’s 2014 annexation, in exchange for Moscow’s backing down on its maximalist demand to occupy five Ukrainian regions, most of which it does not control at present.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country would never recognize Crimea as Russian because it is enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution.

Following a deadly Russian strike across Ukraine on Thursday, Zelensky called for Moscow to halt its attacks in line with the earlier US-brokered ceasefire proposal, one that Kyiv backed unconditionally, whereas Moscow only agreed to comply with various conditions that had not been agreed upon by Kyiv.

“It has been 44 days since Ukraine agreed to a full ceasefire and a halt to strikes... And it has been 44 days of Russia continuing to kill our people,” Zelensky said in a post on social media. “The strikes must be stopped immediately and unconditionally.”