Aug. 12—The following is a machine translation of an article, published on Aug. 11, by the Russian news service TASS, based on an interview with Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who was asked for her perspective on the upcoming August 15 Summit in Alaska between Presidents Putin and Trump.
Zepp-LaRouche Expert: Russia and the U.S. Could Build a Tunnel under the Bering Strait
The founder of the international Schiller Institute said that the August 15 summit “promises to be more than just an attempt to find a way to resolve the crisis in Ukraine.”
WASHINGTON, August 11. /TASS Corr. Sergei Yumatov/. The meeting of Russian and U.S. Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on August 15 in Alaska could allow the two countries to resume work on promising joint projects, including the construction of a tunnel under the Bering Strait that would connect Chukotka and Alaska. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the international Schiller Institute, expressed this opinion in an interview with a TASS correspondent.
According to her, the upcoming summit “promises to be more than just an attempt to find a way to resolve the crisis in Ukraine.” “The presidents of the two countries may finally decide to build a 100-kilometer tunnel under the Bering Strait, which would connect Eurasia and America and facilitate the development of the vast resources of Siberia and the Far East, where the largest deposits of all the elements that can be found in the periodic table are located,” the expert noted. According to her, “the joint development of these resources could become an ideal conflict prevention program and a benefit for all of humanity.”
The idea of implementing a project within the framework of which a more than 100-kilometer tunnel would be built under the Bering Strait to connect the transport systems of Eurasia and America has been discussed for decades. As The Times newspaper noted in 2011, citing British experts, the transportation of goods along the Eurasia-U.S.A. highway, which would also connect resource-rich but sparsely populated areas of the planet with key overpasses, would be less expensive, faster and safer than by sea.
On August 8, Trump said that he expected to meet with Putin in Alaska on August 15. Then, plans for these talks were confirmed by Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov. According to him, the leaders will focus on discussing options for achieving a long-term peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. The Kremlin expects the next meeting between Putin and Trump to take place on Russian territory, Ushakov said.
The Bering Strait is a strait between the easternmost point of Asia (Cape Dezhnev) and the westernmost point of North America (Cape Prince of Wales). The strait’s narrowest width is 86 km, and its shallowest fairway depth is 36 m. The strait connects the Arctic Ocean (Chukchi Sea) with the Pacific Ocean (Bering Sea). It is named after the Russian navigator Vitus Bering, who passed through this strait in 1728. The first of the known navigators to pass through there, in 1648, eighty years before Bering, was Semyon Dezhnev, after whom the cape in the strait was named.