A C-17 Globemaster left Joint Base Andrews on Aug. 25, routed by way of Riga, Latvia, and landed in Moscow. CIA Director John Ratcliffe was aboard and spent about eight hours there. The Kremlin says he did not meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. President Donald Trump called the trip semi-routine.

What Ratcliffe carried there is known to the people who were in the room. Everything printed since is inference. I spent 12 years in Georgia’s state security, defense, and interior ministries working against Russian operations, and I know how such conversations surface: years late, or never.

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But you do not need the transcript. You can describe the room.

OPINION: TRUMP TALKED FOR A WEEK. SIX CAPITALS MOVED

In the week around the flight, drones hit refineries at Perm, Novokuibyshevsk, and Afipsky; Lukoil’s plant at Kstovo stopped processing crude; and on Aug. 28, Yaroslavl was struck for the eighth time this year. Slavneft-YANOS is one of Russia’s five largest refineries and makes the gasoline, diesel, and kerosene Moscow runs on. Its parent is 99.7% held, on a parity basis, by Rosneft and Gazprom — the state’s two champions, unable to keep drones off their own plant.

Forbes Russia calculates that the damaged plants account for 54% of national refining capacity. July gasoline output fell to 75,000-80,000 metric tons a day against a demand of 115,000-120,000. On Aug. 5, the government authorized Euro-2, Euro-3, and Euro-4 gasoline until July 1, 2027 — a technical disclosure rather than a regulatory one, describing what a damaged system can still be relied on to make. More than 20 regions are rationing, with priority lists that put farms alongside ambulances. Gasoline shortages produce queues, and queues are survivable. Diesel moves the country, and this is the season of the harvest.

Then came the part that mattered more than any strike. On Aug. 28, Kommersant published protocols from meetings chaired........

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