Donald Trump’s top national security adviser John Bolton is headed to Moscow to pave the way for a possible U.S.-Russia summit.
While he’s there, the hard-charging, bristle-moustachioed envoy is expected to meet with questions about how the U.S. is acting with regard to Syria.
The state-run RIA Novosti news agency citied Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov on Monday saying the war-torn nation will be on his agenda.
Bolton spokesman Garrett Marquis first mentioned the likelihood of a Russia journey last week in a tweet, saying he would ‘travel to Moscow’ after stops in London and Rome ‘to discuss a potential meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin.’
At the time, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov deflected questions about whether the two leaders would meet when Trump travels to Europe the week after next. for a NATO summit
National Security Advisor John Bolton (top) is expected to lay the groundwork this week in Moscow for a July summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump (bottom)
Trump and Putin last met face-to-face during the November 2017 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Da Nang, Vietname
Bolton’s spokesman first noted his boss’s Moscow swing in a tweet
‘We have nothing to say yet, and if and when we are ready we will make the relevant statement,’ Peskov said then.
Washington-Moscow ties have been strained by the special counsel Russia probe. Trump added stress when he pulled out of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal. And the U.S. has been streadfast in its condemnation of the Kremlin for a poisoning attack of a former Russian spy in the Uniter Kingdom.
Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is President Trump’s third national security adviser
The last Trump-Putin meeting was a brief encounter in November 2017 during an APEC leaders summit in Vietnam.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview broadcast Saturday that he expects Bolton’s visit to bear fruit in the form of a bilateral summit.
‘I think it’s likely President Trump will be meeting with his counterpart in the not-too-distant future following that meeting, Pompeo said in an interview with conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt.
Pompeo said the U.S. was ‘trying to find places where we have overlapping interests’ with Russia, ‘but protecting American interest where we do not.’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized last week that Moscow was ‘ready for contacts’ with Washington, and also said any agreement ‘on a high-level meeting’ would be announced in advance of it.
Trump and Putin discussed a face-to-face meeting in March, when Trump called the Russian leader to congratulate him on his re-election. Both the White House and Kremlin revealed that Trump had invited Putin to visit the White House.
That raised eyebrows among Democrats who have long suggested a cozy relationship between the two men led to Trump’s election victory in 2016.
Trump said June 15 during an unannounced gaggle with reporters outside the White House that ‘it’s possible’ he couldsit down for a Putin summit in July, and ‘it’s much better if we get along with them than if we don’t.’
National Security Advisor John Bolton is pictured listening to Trump as he spoke to reporters on June 9, 2018, during the G7 Summit in La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada
Trump has claimed that ‘nobody has been tougher on Russia,’ and he may have a chance to demonstrate next month that he’s willing to push back against the nation’s autocrat
Trump and Putin hold a closely watched bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017
He was responding to questions about his assertion that Putin’s government should be re-admitted to the G-7 group of nations, which was known as the G-8 before Russia sent troops into Crimea in 2014 and seized the Black Sea peninsula from neighboring Ukraine.
Trump blamed his predecessor, Barack Obama, for that turn of events.
‘Putin didn’t respect President Obama,’ he said. ‘President Obama lost Crimea, just so you understand. This was long before I got there.’
Austria has offered to host a Trump-Putin summit, which a White House official said Monday could happen after the president’s July trip is over.
In addition to the two-day NATO summit in Brussels, he is scheduled to spend a day in London and two more in Scotland, where his real estate management company owns two storied golf courses.
That would make July 16 the likely date.