Russia is closer to the Americas now, but it wasn’t at the time when western European explorers began showing up in the Americas. In fact, the Russian Empire didn’t set out to conquer Siberia until about 1580. The Yupik people already lived on both sides of the Bering Strait, because people in northern Asia had discovered the Americas quite a bit earlier - and some of them moved there, and spread out to become all the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

The Russians reached the Pacific in 1639. It took them a while to gain control of the area, but by the 1730s the Russians had moved into what is now Alaska. That region was part of the Russian Empire until the United States bought it from them for $7.2 million in 1867.

I'm not a historian but I believe the premise of the question to be incorrect. It's true that today's Russia is closer to North America than many European countries but when Leif Ericsson discovered Vinland in 1000 or when Columbus discovered the New World in 1492, the Russian Empire was yet to be formed and had far less land than it does today.

In 1000, Russia's ancestor, Kievan Rus was, relative to modern day Russia, quite small, with territory limited to Eastern Europe, around Kiev and Moscow.

By 1492, Kievan Rus had developed into the Grand Duchy of Moscow and recently annexed a few territories, giving it a great deal of land but it was still limited to Eastern Europe and didn't come close to stretching as far east as modern-day Russia.

Russia reached the Pacific Ocean with its conquest of Siberia, which ended in 1639. At that point it was no longer the Grand Duchy of Moscow but the Tsardom of Russia. To put that in perspective relative to American history, by 1639, pilgrims had already arrived on the Mayflower, there were settlements in New Amsterdam and Boston, Harvard College had been founded. In the year of 1639, Conneticut adopted a constitution.