US CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky
As Volodymyr Zelensky was meeting Donald Trump at the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, I was speaking with Ukrainian journalist Daniel Tkiie about maneuvers around support of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
We begin with expectations over the Zelensky-Trump session, but we focus on another meeting: a supposed “coincidence” that Zelensky, en route to New York, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were at Shannon Airport in western Ireland at the same time.
I set that encounter within an apparent difference of approach within the Trump Administration: a group around Ratcliffe, who visited Moscow last month to send a tough message to Vladimir Putin, and those around Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who saw Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin earlier this month.
We discuss the consequences for Ukraine’s air defenses and counter-attacks inside Russia as winter approaches, and we evaluate the prospect of a trilateral meeting between Zelensky, Putin, and Trump.
We also consider Russia’s staged elections and whether Putin will use them as a platform for a large-scale mobilization to revive Moscow’s invasion on the frontlines.
