Putin aide urges Elon Musk to start building Russia-US tunnel

The billionaire should join the mega-project through his Boring Company, Kirill Dmitriev has said

The time has come for Elon Musk to join efforts to build a 70-mile underwater tunnel linking Russia and the US, Russian presidential aide Kirill Dmitriev has said.

Dmitriev, who also heads Russia’s sovereign wealth fund (RDIF), first proposed the project in October 2025, describing it as a link that would “symbolize unity” and saying it would spur resource exploration, create jobs, and boost both economies. The tunnel would run under the Bering Strait, which is 51 miles wide at its narrowest point and separates Russia’s Chukotka Region from Alaska in the US.

“Time for The Boring Company to start working on the Putin-Trump tunnel that would unite Russia and the US, Eurasia and the Americas,” Dmitriev said in a post on X on Sunday, tagging the US-based billionaire.

Dmitriev’s appeal came after Musk posted that Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky “has gone too far.” Musk’s remark followed US President Donald Trump’s call for Ukraine to elect a new president.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Ukraine, and Zelensky personally, for exacerbating the global fuel crisis, accusing authorities in Kiev of deliberately targeting Russian refining facilities and driving up energy prices. Earlier this week, the US president approved a temporary waiver of sanctions on Russian fuel exports shortly after a phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The move has been condemned by Zelensky as “weak.”

Read more

The tunnel idea echoes a Cold War-era proposal for a “Khrushchev-Kennedy Bridge” linking the two countries. Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna released declassified Soviet files on the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy this week. The 350-page collection included material on the proposed bridge.

Dmitriev first proposed the tunnel two months after Putin and Trump met in Alaska in August 2025 to discuss efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict. The summit marked the first top-level direct contact between Moscow and Washington following the escalation of the conflict.

The presidential aide has estimated that the project could cost more than $65 billion using conventional technology, but said that the Boring Company’s methods could cut the price by 90%, to under $8 billion, and allow construction to be completed within eight years. The RDIF is ready to participate, he said, citing the fund’s role in building a rail bridge linking Russia and China.

Earlier this year, Dmitriev announced that the fund had signed an agreement to continue designing the tunnel, with further steps expected by the end of the year.