In the West the land is either European or Asian (Siberian), no in between. In Russia is Urals considered one or the other? Where are the borders? When I looked up Chelyabinsk, the article said the Asian border was the Miass river, which is west and north of Korkino, Panarin's hometown. Silly stuff, I know.
It's not different in the West, it's just the West tends to fall back into old habits of ignorantly generalize. Best put together in a first West German chancellor Adenauer quote:"In Deutz[part of Cologne] begins the bolshevism, and after Kassel[city] begins Walachia[basically the part of Europe where Dracula was from, more or less the territory of modern Romania]. And when at Magdeburg I come into the norther-german lowlands, I am in Asia.". He was of course not that uneducated in geography, he meant to say, that in his eyes the so called "western civilization" ends way further East than most people think and for him it was not even at the border of East Germany. And of course it was derogatory and racist as he definitely used Walachia as symbol of some land barbaric and pictured Asia as something downright worth less than his West. Oftentimes I find myself looking at a picture of "Great Tartaria" to cover all the land east of Western Europe on some old european maps. It's not as simple as determining whether it's Europe or Asia in this case.
Siberia is just a part of the asian part of Russia. The real trick is though there are different definitions of it's borders. Geografically, politically and traditionally. So there is nothign wrong with having a dispute about those as even the scientists might not agree 100%. So if we leave most of the european part of Russia aside, there are traditionally following parts of Russia: Ural(west of the mountains it's europeand east of it asian, but it is refered to as a singel region, sometimes summed up as Greater Ural as it is huge stretching from the polar regions of northern Ural to the hot steppes of Kazakhstan. It is also an own federal distict in Russia(a unity of a few federal subjects similar to states in the US). There are eight of them and they are basically reflecting the traditional partiotioning of russian regions very common and present everywhere in Russia.), Siberia and Far East. It is somewhat similar to the US understanding of East Coast, West Coast and Midwest. So Siberia is inbetween Ural and Far East, while Far East are basically the eastern coastal regions from the Bering Sea and the US border with Alaska to the Okhotsk Sea and Sea of Japan at Sakhalin(of course speaking of the Russian Far East. The Greater Far East in our understanding the Russian Far East+Eastern Asia and Southeastern Asia). Politically the Far East federal district contains a lot of regions(and I mean millions of square miles) that are traditionally are considered part of core Siberia though, like Sakha-Yakutia or Buryatiya. I.e. both east and west the borders of what to call Siberia can be drawn somewhat differently, for example the region to the East of the Baikal can be sometimes considered still Siberia or not. Same is tru for the Eastern Ural. Geografically some would say that everything Eastern Ural is already Siberia, BUT I bet you if you ask someone from Russia who is from Chelyabinsk(or Korkino for that matter) where he/she is from in Russia 10/10 he/she would say "I am from Ural" and never would they call themselves "sibiryaky", i.e. Siberians, while someone from Omsk, Novosibirsk, Novokuznetsk would always say they are from Siberia. Same goes for the Far Eastern part of Russia. People from there would probably never consider themselves Siberians.
You see, it is not silly at all and can be complicated. But basically just because the traditional understanding of what regions are "Sibir" may be different from politcal borders and geografical disputes of the scientists. Therefore in my russian understanding Panarin is a clear cut Ural native, while even just for the fun of it I looked up the others Columbus guys mentioned and they are all indeed true Siberians by origin.
There is a fun link for you:
Обалдеть! Российская молодежка вынесла взрослую сборную Финляндии – 6:2. Все голы наших в первом матче Евротура – тут
There is a map of Russia with the birthplaces of the U20 team players.
Cheers