The initiative to build a tunnel between Russia and the American continent is gaining popularity.

Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and Russian President’s Special Representative for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries, announced that news of the project has gone viral.

Major Western media outlets have covered the topic, and Donald Trump has called the idea ‘interesting.’

The newspaper The Independent has called the project ambitious. ‘This ambitious project involves the construction of a 112-kilometre railway and freight line, estimated to cost $8 billion and take eight years to complete,’ writes The Independent.

Experts note that if implemented, it could be a breakthrough, capable of significantly changing the global political and macroeconomic landscape.

A tunnel connecting Russia and the US under the Bering Strait could change Northern Hemisphere geopolitics forever, leaving Europe even more isolated, Stanislav Mitrakhovich, a leading expert of the Russian Federation, said.

Russia Today news about the Putin-Trump tunnel linking Russia and Alaska, Eurasia and the American continent, went viral with over 2 million views.

The project involves constructing a tunnel across the Bering Strait, which would connect Russia and Alaska, a state in the United States.

The American infrastructure company Boring Company, founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk in 2016, is proposed for this project.

The project will cost less than $8 billion. According to Russian estimates, the project could be completed in less than eight years.

The tunnel between Chukotka and Alaska will be approximately twice as long as the Eurotunnel between France and Great Britain.

‘That’s an interesting idea. We need to think about it,’ Trump said. ‘We recently built a good road in Alaska. It will give us access to a lot of natural resources. And we’ll get a share of it, a significant share, because we made it possible.’

The Washington Post notes, although proposals to build a bridge or tunnel across the Bering Strait have been put forward for several decades, ‘they have not been seriously considered due to the high cost, the lack of significant trade between the United States and Russia, and geopolitical antagonism between the two countries.’

‘Negotiations to connect the two points have been ongoing for at least 150 years, and several projects have been proposed, but none have ever been realized,’ The Daily Mirror notes.

Historical context: As a reminder, the idea of ​​connecting Russia and Alaska with an infrastructure project has been attempted repeatedly.

Colorado’s first governor, William Gilpin, proposed in his 1890 treatise connecting America and Eurasia with a single highway, which would require building a bridge across the Bering Strait.

This idea received more endorsement when, in 1905, the French traveller Loïc de Lobel, on behalf of a syndicate of American railroad magnates, proposed to the tsarist government the construction of a Siberian-Alaska railway with a tunnel under the Bering Strait.

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In the 1950s, Chinese-American engineer Tung-Yen Lin proposed building a bridge that would promote trade and understanding between the peoples of the United States and the Soviet Union.

In 1991, the Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel and Railroad Group (IBSTRG) was incorporated in Washington, D.C., with plans to build a tunnel under the Bering Strait.

As Ivan Petrov, Head of the Logistics Department at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, noted, although the idea of ​​connecting the American and Eurasian continents through a new logistics link between Alaska and Russia has long existed, technologies have now emerged that make such plans possible.

‘We already have relevant experience. For the US, this would simplify the development of Alaska and create a foundation for expanding cooperation with Canada, through which these transport routes would pass if the project were implemented.

For Russia, this primarily involves developing vast territories, practically from Yakutia to the ocean, where this route could run,’ the analyst says.

According to Petrov, the project could be technologically implemented using not only the tunnelling technologies favored by Elon Musk, but also modern technologies available in China. Specifically, high-speed rail.

‘But in any case, the implementation of this project will kick-start the development of effective international economic relations that unite the interests of Russia, the United States, the European Union, China, and India,’ Petrov said.

The analyst also noted that the project’s implementation will require adaptation to the region’s challenging climatic conditions.

‘Furthermore, it will be necessary to consider that these territories, both on the US and Russian sides, lack a developed linking logistics system. Thousands of kilometers of railway will have to be laid for the tunnel to prove its economic viability,’ Petrov stated.

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However, according to the analyst, Russian and American businesses that develop mineral resources in both the Russian Far East and Alaska could unite around this project.

‘This project could be groundbreaking and capable of significantly changing the political and macroeconomic situation in the world,’ Petrov is confident.

The initiative for a colossal project between Russia and the US is also gaining popularity. If implemented, this idea would elevate relations between Moscow and Washington to a fundamentally new level and launch trade and economic cooperation between the two countries (as with Russia-China trade),’ Semibratov said in an interview with RT.

According to Timofey Mazurchuk; ‘We’d be talking about using Russian and American technologies to implement this project, not just an economic one, but also a political one.

Such a tunnel has economic potential for trade and cargo exchange, which is of interest to the US, since Trump, as a businessman, often prioritizes business over politics. That’s why mutual projects between Russia and the US are of genuine interest to him.’

Mazurchuk recalled that the Russian side has significant experience in constructing complex bridges and tunnels. ‘In particular, the bridge to Crimea was a technically complex architectural project, which Russia successfully implemented.

Several experts already have ideas for how similar technologies can be used to construct underground and underwater structures.

By combining these technologies, it is truly possible to implement this project not only on paper but also in reality. This will certainly require significant economic investment, but if the objectives of this route are correctly defined, a truly unique long-term Russian-American partnership project can be created,’ the expert concluded. You can and should share this story on social media: TELL US WHAT YOU THINK

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