White House national security advisor John Bolton will visit Russia next week to discuss a possible summit between President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin, an administration official said Thursday.
The visit to Russia will take place as part of a trip Bolton's trip to Europe to discuss "national security issues," National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said in a tweet.
The trip will take place Monday through Wednesday, Marquis said.
The announcement confirmed a report in Russian state media cited by The Wall Street Journal that Bolton would be visiting Russia.
"This trip will indeed happen," Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Journal.
On Friday, Russia's TASS news agency did not rule out the possibility that Bolton could meet with Putin himself.
"I cannot answer your question now," Peskov said, according to TASS. "If such a meeting takes place, we will make an announcement to this effect."
The Journal reported on June 1 that the White House was planning for the possibility of a summit between Trump and Putin, citing people familiar with those efforts.
Visiting Russia on Trump's behalf could return some of Bolton's lost clout in the White House, after the hawkish advisor was reportedly sidelined from recent talks between Trump and North Korean leadership.
North Korea had reacted with extreme hostility to Bolton's suggestion that the U.S. would follow the "Libya model" in its negotiations with Kim's regime to remove nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula. North Korea was offended by the remark, since Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was killed during an insurrection years after he agreed to end his country's nuclear weapons program. Trump later walked back Bolton's comment.
Trump has been complimentary toward the Russian president in the past, stoking suspicions about his presidential campaign's alleged coordination with Moscow during the 2016 election.
Russia's presidential press office did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.