WASHINGTON, October 18. /TASS/. A tunnel that would be laid under the Bering Strait and connect Russia and the United States, would be the perfect embodiment of the Peace through Development concept, Helga Zepp LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute, told TASS.

"It is obvious to President Trump that the normalization of US-Russian relations will open tremendous prospects for the development of the economic cooperation between the two countries. Most spectacular will be the ‘Putin-Trump Tunnel’, which connects the Americas through a 70 miles link through the Bering Strait with Afro-Eurasia, as [CEO of Russian Direct Investment Fund, Special representative of the Russian president for economic cooperation with foreign countries] Kirill Dmitriev posted on X," she said.

"This tunnel would help to open up the entire Far East of Russia for development and provide all raw material-poor nations with enormous investment potentials," the expert added. "The ‘Putin-Trump Tunnel’ would be the perfect representation of the concept of ‘Peace through Development’," she stressed. Budapest chosen as venue for new meeting between Russian and US leaders will help "to remind the Europeans of the almost lost art of diplomacy," Zepp LaRouche noted. "Good for the world," she concluded.

US President Donald Trump has called the project of building a tunnel under the Bering Strait interesting, allowing to connect Russia and the United States by rail. Kirill Dmitriev has said that such a tunnel could be built in less than eight years, and its cost would not exceed $8 bln.

The idea of a 100-kilometer-long tunnel under the Bering Strait has been under discussion for decades. The Times newspaper noted in 2011, citing British experts, that transporting freight along the Eurasia-US highway, which would connect also resource-rich but sparsely populated areas of the planet with key routes, would be less expensive, faster and safer than by sea.