Various aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to wireless communication. In some aspects, a remote user equipment (UE) may establish, via a sidelink signaling interface, a unicast link between the remote UE and a relay UE; establish a connection with a base station via the relay UE, wherein a message associated with establishing the connection is communicated via the unicast link; establish one or more bearers based at least in part on a radio bearer configuration received from the base station via the connection; establish, with the relay UE, one or more sidelink access stratum entities for the one or more bearers using one or more sidelink radio resource control messages based at least in part on an access stratum configuration received from the base station via the connection; and receive or transmit control-plane or user-plane traffic via the one or more bearers.