By Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attack a NATO country, and he played down media reports that CIA Director John Ratcliffe warned Russian officials against such an attack earlier in the week.
"He's not going to attack a NATO territory," Trump said of the Russian leader while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office.
Earlier in the day, Trump told Axios in a phone interview that there would be no such attack, and that Ratcliffe, who flew to Russia on Tuesday to meet briefly with intelligence counterparts, had not been dispatched to deliver any particular message.
"Ratcliffe sees his Russian counterpart once every six months or once every year. They have a very good relationship. There was no message and there was nothing unusual," Trump told the news outlet.
Trump's comments came after the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Ratcliffe had traveled to Moscow to warn Russia off any attack on a NATO member.
Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that Ratcliffe did bring up the possibility of a Russian operation against a NATO member during that meeting, though it was unclear if that was the sole purpose of the trip.
One source said they discussed several topics, including Russia's support for Iran, which has proven an irritant for the U.S. The sources were granted anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence.
European and U.S. intelligence officials have long monitored Russian sabotage and gray zone attacks in Europe that fall below the threshold of full-on war and which are generally aimed at weakening NATO's unity and its member states' willingness to support Ukraine against Russian aggression.
Among the potential plots that Western intelligence officials have been monitoring in recent months is the possibility that Russia uses a Ukrainian drone to attack a country in eastern or northeastern Europe in a false flag operation that obscures Moscow's authorship.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery, Bo Erickson, Erin Banco and Jana Winter; editing by Michelle Nichols, Don Durfee and Chizu Nomiyama)
