The US State Department has once once again re-issued an urgent advisory warning Americans not to travel to Russia. The renewed travel advisory also tells any American citizens currently in Russia to depart immediately. It cites the danger associated with the ongoing war with Ukraine, as well as the significant risk of wrongful detention by Russian officials, and the possibility of terrorism.
This is nothing new, given such warnings have been issued going all the way back to February 2022, but it suggests that the Trump administration's view is that things might continue to escalate as efforts toward a peace deal stall.
"Russian officials often question and threaten U.S. citizens without reason. Russian security services have arrested U.S. citizens on false charges. They have denied them fair treatment and convicted them without credible evidence. Russian authorities have opened questionable investigations against U.S. citizens for their religious activities," the advisory reads.
This joins no less than five fresh advisories reissued by the department since Dec. 18. They include Level 4: Do Not Travel warnings for Belarus and Yemen, as well a Level 2 warning for Jordan due to terrorism, and a Level 1 advisory for Portugal.
Currently the State Department also has active Do Not Travel warnings for Venezuela, Syria, Haiti, Ukraine, and several other countries.
One thing the official Russia travel warning leaves out is the fact that the CIA continues to assist Ukraine in actively targeting Russian territory, especially energy sites.
Even as the Pentagon has taken steps to draw down its support, the CIA has been ramping up its anti-Russia covert actions launched out of Ukraine, as The NY Times this week highlighted:
Where Mr. Hegseth had marginalized his Ukraine-supporting generals, the C.I.A. director, Mr. Ratcliffe, had consistently protected his own officers’ efforts for Ukraine. He kept the agency’s presence in the country at full strength; funding for its programs there even increased. When Mr. Trump ordered the March aid freeze, the U.S. military rushed to shut down all intelligence sharing. But when Mr. Ratcliffe explained the risk facing C.I.A. officers in Ukraine, the White House allowed the agency to keep sharing intelligence about Russian threats inside Ukraine.
Now, the agency honed a plan to at least buy time, to make it harder for the Russians to capitalize on the Ukrainians’ extraordinary moment of weakness.
"Brilliant" or foolhardy and stupid to keep poking the nuclear-armed Russian bear?
“A C.I.A. expert had identified a type of coupler that was so hard to replace or repair that a refinery would remain offline for weeks.”
— Meaghan Mobbs (@mobbs_mentality) January 1, 2026
Brilliant asymmetric work. https://t.co/bsfHmYpszi
The Times report presented some jarring language which points to the Trump administration playing with fire in provoking Putin in order to force him to the negotiating table:
As the campaign began to show results, Mr. Ratcliffe discussed it with Mr. Trump. The president seemed to listen to him; they had a frequent Sunday tee time. According to U.S. officials, Mr. Trump praised America’s surreptitious role in these blows to Russia’s energy industry. They gave him deniability and leverage, he told Mr. Ratcliffe, as the Russian president continued to “jerk him off.”
The energy strikes would come to cost the Russian economy as much as $75 million a day, according to one U.S. intelligence estimate. The C.I.A. would also be authorized to assist with Ukrainian drone strikes on “shadow fleet” vessels in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Gas lines would start forming across Russia.
“We found something that is working,” a senior U.S. official said, then had to add, “How long, we don’t know.”
Or perhaps it's "working" until things go boom between NATO and Moscow, mushroom cloud style.
Meanwhile, the CIA as usual has an outsized role in tipping Trump in a direction which makes peace harder, and a lot further away:
Mr. Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. chief, flew to Alaska with the president on Aug. 15 and, before the meeting, briefed him on “what we’ve got” about Mr. Putin’s intentions. It did not align with Mr. Trump’s instinct; the Russian, the agency argued, was not interested in ending the war. A senior American official described the assessment this way: “Trump isn’t going to get what he wants. He is just going to have to make Alaska a show.”
US strategy: Reduce Russian refining capacity by targeting the refineries with Ukraine and try reducing Indian imports by tariffs and threats of further action against cos involved, while calling out EU’s double standards—making it harder for them to sabotage any future dialogue. https://t.co/T1GnlfFg0q
— Rishap Vats (@VatsRishap) September 13, 2025
Above is a scene which has played out weekly, and almost daily, for a matter of months now. One option the Kremlin might be looking at is fully capturing Ukraine's crucial Black Sea export hub of Odessa, which would further decimate the country economically. NATO might by that point be ready to get more directly involved. Trump has also issued warnings against seizing Odessa.
