The White House has begun preparations for a possible summit between US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin, a meeting the Kremlin has pursued since Mr Trump took office 17 months ago.
John Bolton, Mr Trump’s national security adviser, “will meet with US allies in London and Rome to discuss national security issues, and travel to Moscow to discuss a potential meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin,” said Garrett Marquis, National Security Council spokesman, in a tweet on Wednesday.
The Kremlin had earlier confirmed a report by Interfax, the Russian news agency, that Mr Bolton was expected in Moscow.
Mr Trump is due to visit Europe for the Nato summit on July 11-12 and to go on to visit the UK on July 13.
Russian officials have previously mentioned Austria, Finland, Slovenia and Iceland as potential host countries for a summit with Mr Trump.
The Kremlin had said a meeting before the Nato summit was not planned and Mr Putin was unlikely to travel out of Russia on the eve of the World Cup final in Moscow on July 15.
Mr Trump and Mr Putin met twice on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg in July last year, but those relatively short encounters fell far short of the Kremlin’s wishes for building a relationship.
Moscow has sought a full bilateral summit to create chemistry between the leaders since before Mr Trump’s arrival in office in January 2017.
Kremlin aides have said the ideal scenario was for the first such summit to be arranged in a third country without strong anti-Russian inclinations, preferably in Europe. Officials have previously mentioned Austria, Finland, Slovenia and Iceland as potential host countries.
Moscow’s ambitions have been continually frustrated by the uproar in Washington about its alleged collusion with the Trump campaign, which Mr Trump has always denied, and by the fallout over Russia’s aggressive policies in countries ranging from Ukraine to Syria. In April the Trump administration imposed the US’s most stringent sanctions on Russia to date.
But Mr Trump has repeatedly shown interest in engaging Mr Putin. During a phone call this year, he invited the Russian president to the White House. At the G7 summit in Canada this month, he suggested the group of industrial countries should once again invite Russia, which it had excluded after Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Source: https://www.ft.com/content/6e67a3a2-7539-11e8-aa31-31da4279a601
