Putin Envoy Woos Musk With Proposal for Russia-to-US Tunnel

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy has called on Elon Musk to build a tunnel between Alaska and Russia’s far Far East, resurrecting a decades-old idea at a time when the Kremlin is trying to strengthen ties with the White House.

Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, has called for a “Putin-Trump Tunnel” under the Bering Strait. In a series of X posts, he claimed that Musk’s drilling venture, Boring Co., could complete the project in less than eight years for about $8 billion, but did not provide details.

Kremlin and Boring Co. did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The only public project Boring has completed to date is an underground loop connecting a conference center and several hotels in Las Vegas.

The site is odd at best, given that the tunnel would have to cut through some of the world’s most inhospitable, remote and wasteland. This follows a call by Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday to discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine and fits into Dmitriev’s broader pattern of rallying Musk and the U.S. president to Russia’s side.

Trump said the two leaders, who met in Alaska earlier this year, will hold a summit in Budapest in the coming weeks to continue ceasefire talks.

“The question is who will use it,” said Emily Ferris, a senior researcher at RUSI, which studies Russian transportation infrastructure. “It’s impossible to get up there in the first place, and it’s mostly deserted. It’s not well connected to other parts of the Far East.”

Trump was asked about this idea during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House on Friday.

“A tunnel from Russia to Alaska; I just heard about that,” Trump said. “That’s an interesting thing. We’ll have to think about it.”

With the help of Ilya Arkhipov and Kiel Porter.

This article has been generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to the text.