Russia’s Ukrainian-born Special Presidential Envoy for economic cooperation with foreign countries and CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev, proposed building a rail tunnel to connect Russia and Alaska across the Bering Strait.
Writing on X on Thursday, Dimitriev said, “Imagine connecting the US and Russia, the Americas and the Afro-Eurasia with the Putin-Trump Tunnel – a 70-mile [112-kilometer] link symbolizing unity.”
The proposal, which came shortly after the latest Trump-Putin phone call during which Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov claimed, “One of the American president’s key points was that ending the conflict in Ukraine would open up enormous prospects for developing economic cooperation between the United States and Russia.”
Dmitriev’s post included diagrams that showed the proposed route referenced previous concepts, suggesting costs of $65 billion or more, but said new technology – specifically systems used by Elon Musk’s Boring Company’s tunnel construction services – could bring the project in at less than $8 billion and be completed in less than eight years.
The Kennedy–Khrushchev world peace bridge
In another post supporting the idea Dmitriev published a hand drawn proposal made 65 years ago, which was allegedly retrieved from a Moscow archive dedicated to the 35th US President John F. Kennedy, in which he outlined a plan for a Soviet-American project to be called the “Kennedy-Khrushchev World Peace Bridge” According to notes scribbled on the paper, JFK demanded the project should begin “at once.”
Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna posted on X on Tuesday that the diagram was included in a 386-page dossier detailing the Soviet Union’s reports on Kennedy, including the assassination, she had received from the Russian embassy. She said: “A team of experts is… to begin translation and full review of the documents.”
The “Putin Trump tunnel”
Dmitriev proposed the name and said it would include rail and cargo links, that would unlock the ability for joint US-Russian resource exploration that would create jobs and boost both countries’ economies.
He said the idea was not without precedent: “RDIF has already invested in and built the first-ever Russia-China railroad bridge. The time has come to do more and connect the Continents for the first time in human history. The time has come to connect Russia and the US.”
