are Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin digging a common tunnel?

US President Donald Trump has expressed interest in the idea of ​​an undersea tunnel between the US state of Alaska and Russia. “A tunnel from Russia to Alaska” is interesting, Trump said on Friday when asked by reporters during his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House. The idea had previously been put forward by a representative of Russia.

Trump indicated that he had heard about the possible cross-border project and asked Zelensky: “What do you think of that, Mr. President?”. “How do you like this idea?” The Ukrainian head of state was not very enthusiastic and replied: “I’m not happy with it.” Trump then laughed.

The Kremlin’s special economic envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, put forward the idea for an underwater tunnel on the online service X on Thursday. The idea of ​​a “peace bridge” between Russia and Alaska dates back to the Cold War era, Dmitriev explained, publishing a simple graphic of a proposed tunnel route under the Bering Sea in the north of the Pacific Ocean.

Alaska had once belonged to Russia: the Tsarist Empire sold the area to the United States in 1867 – for 7.2 million US dollars. Probably a “good deal” from Donald Trump’s perspective today.

The Russian special envoy has now stated that the Boring Company, a company owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, could implement the project in less than eight years. With modern technology from The Boring Company, “this could become a Putin-Trump tunnel,” a 112-kilometer-long connection between Russia and the United States, the Russian special envoy wrote. The Boring Company, founded by Musk, aims to improve urban transport by building Tunnels to revolutionize.

Musk supported Trump in last year’s presidential election campaign with an estimated amount of more than $270 million (around 230 million euros) and served him as an advisor on reducing bureaucracy for several months after he took office in January.

In May, Musk left the government’s Department of State Efficiency (Doge) to focus more on his companies, which include the car maker Tesla and the space company SpaceX. A dispute over Trump’s budget and tax law led to a falling out in June: the two men publicly criticized and threatened each other.