The small rock sits just across a small straight from the island of Big Diomede, home to a Russian military base. Tensions between the two countries with the world’s largest nuclear arsenals have almost boiled over following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
However, for the locals of Little Diomede not much has changed since the bloody war started.
“We’re the back door of the country – or the front door, rather,” Edward Soolook, a 55-year-old lifelong resident of Diomede told Insider.
He said Russian troops stationed next door yell at fishing boats that stray too close to the larger island.
Some say they are keen to fire off warning shots, although Soolook has never seen one.
“We’re safe, as long as we sleep good at night,” he said. Soolook also noted that life on the remote island had not changed much since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The local Inuit people used to inhabit both Big and Little Diomede. They married, traded and exchanged news regularly.
The straight between the two islands is generally frozen over, meaning locals could walk between the two – braving winter temperatures of around 6 to 10 degrees (-12 to -14 C) and 90 mile-per-hour winds.
However, in 1948, the Soviet Union constructed a military base on the larger of the islands.
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There are only about 30 buildings on the island and the rocky landscape means there are no roads.
Although the war in Ukraine has not affected the residents of Little Diomede much, another global concern, climate change, may disrupt local’s lives on the small island.
When Little Diomede’s frozen airstrip broke apart in 2018, the four-foot thick ice sheet on which it sat never returned.
“Climate change is real and it is demanding that we the people must learn to live around new seasons, weather, ice conditions, and even the loss of our culture. Soon, we won’t see the manners we practice, the practices that our ancestors gave us to survive,” Opik Okinga, Diomede’s environmental coordinator told Alaska magazine.
