Kremlin Plans Tunnel to the White House
The government is considering an ambitious plan to dig an enormous tunnel linking Dmitry Medvedev’s Kremlin and Vladimir Putin’s White House, speeding up the impending cross-town trip for ministers and high-ranking officials, two officials said Monday.
The multibillion-dollar design, promoted as a way to reduce bureaucracy and ease traffic gridlock, would include a two-lane highway and possibly displace the British Embassy, said the officials, who asked for anonymity so they could speak with candor.
“No one’s really sure what’s going to happen, but this seems like the simplest way to alleviate the traffic jams as bureaucrats rush between the Kremlin and White House on official business,” said one official, who works in the Kremlin.
Medvedev will take the president’s office in the Kremlin after his inauguration on May 7, and he has promised to appoint his mentor, Putin, as prime minister. The prime minister’s office is in the White House, about 2 kilometers west of the Kremlin.
Speculation has swirled over who will be in charge once Putin leaves the Kremlin, but the tunnel plan sheds little light on that issue.
The two officials said the tunnel plan was preliminary, so few details were available about the exact cost and when it might open. The route is also still being worked out, but one version would require the relocation of the British Embassy compound from Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya to a former furniture factory in northern Moscow, the Kremlin official said.
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Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 5:51 pm under