A 350-page Russian document on the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy is grabbing lots of eyeballs, not for what it says about the 1963 assassination, but for a map of a bridge once planned to link Russia and the United States.
The files were handed to US Representative Anna Paulina Luna by Russia's ambassador in Washington. "The following report (referring to) the JFK assassination was delivered to me by the Ambassador from Russia and is now made accessible to the American public at the link below," Luna wrote on X, while sharing the file.
She added that while "experts are actively authenticating the legitimacy of these documents," they are currently believed to be authentic.
Russia's embassy in Washington confirmed it had shared the archives and said the full set would be published in Moscow in November. Russian outlet Sputnik called the document "Kremlin's official findings on the JFK assassination." The files could give insights into what the KGB, the security agency of the Soviet Union, knew about Kennedy's killing.
A Bridge Once Meant To Connect Rivals
One of the documents includes a Cold War-era map showing a proposed bridge between the United States and the USSR (present-day Russia).
The maps show that at some point, the Cold War rivals planned a bridge between Alaska and Siberia, spanning the Bering Strait, connecting the two countries. At its closest point, the two nations are separated by just 3.8 kilometres, between Little Diomede (US) and Big Diomede (Russia).
The bridge was dubbed the Kennedy-Khrushchev World Peace Bridge.
Map Revives Calls For 'Putin-Trump Tunnel'
The map has continued talk in Moscow of reviving the project. Kirill Dmitriev, President Vladimir Putin's investment envoy, shared the bridge image on X, calling for a revival of the plan.
"With modern The Boring Company technology, this could become a Putin-Trump tunnel connecting Eurasia and the Americas for < $8 billion," Dmitriev posted, referring to Elon Musk's tunnelling company.
In another post, he wrote, "Elon Musk, imagine connecting the US and Russia. The Americas and Afro-Eurasia, with the Putin-Trump Tunnel, a 70-mile link symbolising unity. Traditional costs are $65B+, but [Musk's] Boring Company's tech could reduce it to less than $8 billion. Let's build a future together!"
Why Now?
While some are welcoming the release of the documents, others are questioning the motives behind it. The timing has drawn attention, as the handover comes amid strained US-Russia relations and ongoing tensions over the war in Ukraine.
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused gunman, was killed before trial, and the 1964 Warren Commission concluded he acted alone.
Oswald lived in the USSR for nearly three years and, weeks before the shooting, tried to obtain a visa from a Soviet mission in Mexico City. The KGB had kept close tabs on him in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
In the 1990s, the US Congress sought access to Soviet files on Kennedy's death but only received summaries during the Clinton administration, the New York Post reported.
