As Trump and Putin meet in Alaska, two twin islands connected by an ice bridge in the Bering Strait are a reminder that the US and Russia's culture and history are deeply intertwined.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with US President Donald Trump in Anchorage today, it will mark the first time a Russian leader has ever set foot in Alaska, despite the fact that the US's largest state was actually a Russian colony from 1799 to 1867.

The summit, billed as a conversation about ending the war in Ukraine, comes more than 150 years after the US purchased the nearly 600,000sq-mile expanse from Tsarist Russia for just $7.2m (less than two cents an acre), and serves as a reminder that the two nations are far closer than most imagine.

Though the US and Russia are often cast as distant rivals, their histories and geographies are deeply intertwined in America's 49th state. In the early 18th Century, the frigid waters of the Bering Strait, just 51 miles wide at its narrowest point, served as a thoroughfare for Siberian traders, Russian Orthodox missionaries and Indigenous Iñupiat and Yupik communities who moved freely between the two continents to trade, marry and hunt.

Even after Alaska became part of the United States, many cultural and familial ties lingered across the divide, and today, travellers to Alaska may still spot onion-domed Russian Orthodox churches, meet residents with Russian surnames and see Russian artefacts in museums. But nowhere is this cultural and geographical proximity more striking than on the Diomede Islands.

The Diomedes are two wind-lashed volcanic outcrops separated by just 2.4 miles of sea and ice. The smaller of the two, Little Diomede, is part of the US, while the larger, Big Diomede, is Russian.

Don't try the trek

It is illegal to travel between the Diomedes without proper documentation.

Yet, it isn't just countries and continents that cleave the twin isles: the invisible sweep of the International Date Line also runs between them. So, despite the fact that residents on Little Diomede can see Russia from their wooden cabins and – in theory – walk across the frozen ice bridge to Big Diomede, as their ancestors did, Big Diomede is 21 hours ahead of Little Diomede, a quirk that has led locals to dub the frozen outcrops the "Yesterday and Tomorrow Islands".

Today, Big Diomede is uninhabited, save for a Russian border guard station. Little Diomede is home to about 80 residents – most of them Iñupiat, who live in a cluster of houses perched on the western shore, the only patch of relatively flat ground between sheer cliffs and the turbulent sea. Helicopters usually deliver mail and a few supplies once per week, but fog and violent winds often delay landings for days or weeks on end. Instead, residents on Little Diomede have relied on fishing, hunting seals and walrus and catching seabirds for centuries.

Long before modern borders were drawn, however, both islands were inhabited by Indigenous peoples. Even after Alaska was purchased by the US in 1867, the isles functioned as one community for more than 80 years, with residents still paddling, walking or dog-sledding freely between the two landmasses.

That all changed in 1948 when, at the onset of the Cold War, the Soviet Union relocated Big Diomede's Indigenous residents to the mainland, scattering them across Siberia. The two nations sealed the border, creating a........

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