Underground tunnels from Russia to the USA
Executive summary
Proposals to link Russia and the United States by an undersea tunnel across the Bering Strait have resurfaced repeatedly over more than a century, ranging from early 20th‑century fantasies to formal 2007 plans and a 2025 Kremlin‑linked pitch; none of these proposals has produced an actual tunnel, and the idea remains primarily political symbolism and ambition rather than imminent construction [1] [2] [3]. Contemporary coverage shows a mix of technical blueprints, nationalist spectacle, and propaganda theater: advocates tout connectivity and trade while critics point to seismic, permafrost, infrastructure, sanction, and cost barriers that make the project practically implausible today [2] [4] [5].
1. A long‑running idea with episodic revivals
The concept of a Bering Strait crossing traces back to Gilded Age proposals and was formally revived in Russian planning cycles—most notably the 2007 TKM‑World Link that envisioned a multi‑thousand‑mile corridor with a long undersea section and a headline price tag near US$65 billion—and has persisted in advocacy groups and specialist portals ever since [1] [4] [6].
2. What the 2007 and later proposals actually proposed
The TKM‑World Link of 2007 proposed a 3,700‑mile transport corridor feeding into an undersea tunnel hundreds of kilometers long with rail, road, pipelines and fiber lines, backed in publicity materials by Russian state firms and put forward as a 10–15 year job for state/private partners; more recent RDIF pitches recycle that scale while sometimes shrinking the undersea distance to roughly 70–112 miles in marketing graphics [1] [2] [3].
3. The 2025 “Putin‑Trump” pitch: politics wrapped in technobabble
In October 2025 Kirill Dmitriev, a Kremlin investment envoy, publicly proposed a 70‑mile to 112‑km tunnel he called a symbolic “Putin‑Trump” link and even suggested The Boring Company or U.S. partners could be involved; the outreach followed high‑level phone diplomacy and was framed as both economic opportunity and a diplomatic gesture, not as an approved binational engineering program [3] [7] [8].
4. Engineering, climate and logistics hurdles that doom fast timelines
Experts and reporting underline the deep, practical obstacles: the Bering region is seismically active, riddled with permafrost and extreme cold, and lacks the necessary hinterland rail, road and port infrastructure on both sides—building those thousands of kilometers of approach lines would dwarf the tunnel itself and drive costs and timelines far beyond optimistic claims [2] [4] [9].
5. Cost, governance and sanctions are as prohibitive as geology
Even past estimates pegged development at tens of billions of dollars for the tunnel alone and many times that for the full corridor; contemporary proposals that suggest dramatic cost reductions via private firms have not addressed the political realities of sanctions, land access, binational permitting, or who would fund and govern cross‑border security and customs—a gap routinely noted in press coverage [1] [3] [9].
6. Propaganda, symbolism and media hype—what to watch for
Coverage from Russian outlets and Kremlin emissaries often frames the tunnel as a peace or unity project while glossing over feasibility and financing; Western reporting treats the pitch as a mix of grandstanding and soft diplomacy, emphasizing that the idea fuels headlines more than construction plans—readers should distinguish between promotional graphics and any formal intergovernmental agreements, which have not been presented in the sources reviewed [5] [3] [2].
7. Where reality ends and speculation begins
There is a well‑documented history of studies, enthusiast portals and periodic government interest, but no contemporary evidence of a started cross‑Bering tunnel project or a signed, financed, binational program ready to begin construction; sources document proposals, studies and political pitches, not a physical tunnel or committed construction timeline [1] [6] [3].
Conclusion
The notion of underground tunnels from Russia to the USA is historically persistent and periodically revived for political, economic and promotional purposes, but all authoritative reporting and technical commentary compiled here show that such a tunnel does not exist and that enormous geological, infrastructural, political and financial obstacles make it extremely unlikely in the near term absent major shifts in geopolitics and investment [1] [2] [3].