European officials say they have no evidence that Russia is preparing a conventional attack on Nato or on a Baltic state.

The assessment pushes back on reports that averting such an attack was the main purpose of CIA director John Ratcliffe's unannounced visit to Moscow this week, Bloomberg reported on August 28, citing people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. None of the officials had been briefed by Washington on what Ratcliffe actually discussed. Their read - that the agenda most likely covered ending the war in Ukraine, restating the strength of Nato's Article 5 commitment and the Iran war - is inference from their own intelligence and from how the US normally operates, not from any American readout.

One official said the trip was also probably aimed at stopping Russia overreacting to US economic measures against Iran that could catch Moscow too, and at pressing the Kremlin to drop its support for Tehran.

Intelligence and government officials have warned for months that Russian services are exploring infrastructure sabotage and false-flag operations against the Baltic states and Poland, and Europe has absorbed armed drone incursions, attempted assassinations and unexplained arson in countries arming Kyiv. What none of it has produced, on these assessments, is a change in Russia's military posture - and it is posture, not provocation, that precedes an invasion.

The Baltic governments said the same on their own account. Officials in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all said on August 27 that their threat assessments were unchanged, seeing no immediate threat in the visit.

Nato allies have spent recent months discussing how to widen contact with Russia at intelligence and military level precisely to stop miscalculation around the hybrid campaign, according to European officials. Maintaining channels with Russian counterparts is not unusual for Western agencies. What struck the officials was that Ratcliffe appeared to want the trip known publicly.

Asked on August 27 whether Ratcliffe had delivered a warning to Russia not to attack Nato territory, President Donald Trump disputed that any warning had been delivered - "there was no message and there was nothing unusual" - and added: "They are not going to attack Nato territory." The White House declined to comment on August 28.

Not everyone reads it that way. Poland's foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote that Putin's intelligence services had told the CIA director he would not provoke Nato, and that Putin had told President Joe Biden's CIA director he would not invade Ukraine. "We should accelerate defence preparations," he wrote.

Behind the posture question sits an economy under strain. Russia has made limited battlefield progress, and Moscow imposed sharp spending restrictions after an April liquidity crisis exposed the running cost of the war. Ukraine, meanwhile, is struggling to source enough interceptor missiles for what is expected to be a heavy Russian strike campaign this winter.