White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said on Tuesday that National Security Adviser John Bolton would meet with representatives of Israel and Ukraine, before his meeting in Geneva with his Russian counterpart, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, in Geneva next week.
Bolton will visit Israel as the first leg of his trip, according to Sanders.
Bolton, who only a year ago called the Russian interference in the 2016 US elections “a true act of war,” has undergone a significant role reversal since taking his new office, and is carrying out the President’s policy vis-à-vis Russia.
Bolton’s visit to Israel, on the other hand, his first since taking office, poses no such conflicts and ambiguities for the former US envoy to the UN. Bolton is pro-Israel, lock, stock and barrel. Habayit Hayehudi chairman Naftali Bennett spoke for everyone in the Netanyahu government when he called Bolton a “stalwart friend of Israel.”
Patrushev and Bolton will undoubtedly discuss the Russian and American presence in Syria, with all its ramifications, including Israel’s and the Trump White House’s views on the continued Iranian presence in post-civil war Syria.
