U.S. national security adviser John Bolton will visit Moscow next week, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"As far as we know, such a trip will actually take place. This is all that we can say right now," Peskov stressed.
Bolton will visit Moscow to prepare for a possible meeting of U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Interfax news agency reported, citing sources.
Peskov confirmed Bolton’s expected visit to Moscow but refrained from further comment.
According to the Washington Post, the Putin-Trump meeting could take place before a July 11-12 NATO summit in Brussels. Bloomberg reported late Wednesday that there were plans for the two leaders to meet either before the NATO summit or after Mr Trump’s visit to the UK on 13 July.
The senior research fellow at the European Research Centre of the International Relations Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Olenchenko, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that in conjunction with the plan of American senators to visit Moscow, this news speaks about the improvment of Russian-American relations. "If we consider the absence of any contacts as zero point, then event the intention to realize these contacts is positive. Washington's initiative says that, apparently, the US has already come to an understanding of the need to take practical actions in establishing links, not just speak about it," he said.
It is very important that the visits on the eve of the preparation for the meeting between Putin and Trump are planned at such a high level. "These visits, showing the possibility for US politicians to visit Russia, open the gates to the contacts at a lower level. All together it begins to form a mechanism that can be called a mechanism for preparing for the meeting of the leaders of both countries," Vladimir Olenchenko stressed.
"At the moment, both the American and the Russian sides recognize that we are at the zero point of relations. It's even difficult to say how much the US would like to improve these contacts because we have no political contacts. We can just say that there is a movement towards positive," the senior research fellow at the European Research Centre of the International Relations Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences said.
Director of the Institute of Strategic Planning and Forecasting, Professor Alexander Gusev, described John Bolton's visit to Moscow as part of the planned preparation for the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. "Bolton's visit is not accidental, because Trump most likely gave him the official order to prepare the meeting with Putin in the Austrian capital. There are two sides to the coin here, first, the NATO summit will be held in Brussels on July 11-12, and Trump arrives in the UK on an official visit on July 13, second, the meeting between Putin and Trump can take place on July 10. That is a matter of serious concern for Great Britain, since the meeting with Putin can play a decisive role in the future policy of Trump, which the UK and NATO did not want to happen. I think Bolton will negotiate a possible option of the meeting before the NATO summit in Brussels," he predicts.
"Congressmen in charge of foreign policy in the US Congress will coordinate the agenda of the meeting of the two presidents during their visit to Russia. We have had a lot of questions, the presidents have not met for a long time, and in the case of Trump it is generally the first meeting in a broad format. But all this active diplomatic work does not mean that relations between our countries have become warmer," Alexander Gusev warned.
"Washington understands the need to build constructive relations with Russia. We do not just possess nuclear weapons, but there is a leader at the head of our state who has enormous political weight in the world," the director of the Institute of Strategic Planning and Forecasting said.
