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According to reports, the Kremlin is seeking to block the US from supplying Ukraine with “game-changing” long-range Tomahawk missiles and hopes the tunnel will please Trump…
Vladimir Putin is trying to woo Donald Trump with a £6 billion scheme to build a tunnel connecting Russia and America.
The proposal has emerged as the Kremlin chief desperately tries to stop Trump from supplying Ukraine with long-range, potentially "game-changing" Tomahawk missiles.
The project for a "Putin-Trump tunnel" bearing the names of both presidents was presented by Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund [RDIF] or sovereign wealth fund, and a close family associate of the Russian dictator's increasingly powerful daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, 39.
Elon Musk's The Boring Company would participate in digging the tunnel, according to Dmitriev, who is part of the Russian delegation that is allegedly working to mediate an end to the conflict.
"Imagine connecting the US and Russia, America and Afro-Eurasia, with the Putin-Trump tunnel, a 70-mile road that symbolizes unity," Dmitriev declared, ignoring the Kremlin's war that has destroyed unity.
The closest point between the two nations lies across the rugged Bering Strait. At its narrowest, just 82 km separates Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska from Cape Dezhnev in Russia's most remote territory, Chukotka.
However, there is a vast gulf between relatively prosperous Alaska and the impoverished whaling territory of Chukotka.
"Using modern technology from The Boring Company, this could become the Putin-Trump tunnel connecting Eurasia and America, [and built] for less than $8 billion," Dmitriev declared.
Russia is apparently counting on the ambitious project to pique Trump's interest as Putin tries to prevent long-range US Tomahawk missiles from reaching Ukraine.
"RDIF has already invested and built the first railway bridge between Russia and China," he declared, adding "it is time to do more and connect the continents for the first time in human history. It is time to connect Russia and the United States."
He claimed that "this would not only change global trade, it would change everything for the better."
In theory, such a venture could extend the world-famous Trans-Siberian Railway to North America. In fact, these plans are not new; American expansionist William Gilpin once proposed a global railway that included a crossing to the Bering Strait.
Joseph Strauss, who later became the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, designed a design for the railway bridge and presented it to Imperial Russia.
The last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, had his eye on this grand project before his overthrow in 1917 and subsequent execution by the Bolsheviks the following year.
The idea was revived by the US in the 1960s, during the Cold War, and was envisioned as the Kennedy-Khrushchev Peace Bridge, but failed due to the US superpower rivalry with the USSR.
Two islands along the proposed route, Russia's Ratmanov Island and America's Krusenstern Island, are just two and a half miles apart.
If both islands serve as bridge points, the tunnel construction could be carried out in several stages.
Dmitriev estimated that the tunnel could be completed within eight years, by which time Trump would be 87 and Putin 81. /Adapted from Daily Star/
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