One is a bit over 500 km and the other is about 1300 km. It's not meaningfully 'about the same distance'. It's an enourmous distance to hit only three European countries, though, you can do this in much less time/distance driving around nearby Trieste or Bratislava.

Here’s a more fun context instead: after college I went on a roadtrip and covered 13 countries in about 4000 miles.

For another US reference point: the entire European Union is about the same size as Alaska.

EU is a lot bigger than Alaska and there's a lot of Europe it doesn't cover.

In the context of European "genetics" keeping Russia and Ukraine out of Europe is basically non-sense considering the Slavs kind of come from there :)

This article is about analysing the genetics of people living in Europe, so the entire continent must be considered and "historically" Europe extends until west Russia.

If you consider only the European Union, you kind of exclude the British, who share a lot with the rest of the continent.

Empirically/anecdotally I bet quite a few people could with 90%+ accuracy pick a (third-generation) Iberian vs Frank vs Polack vs Scandi out of a lineup just by physical features

Alternatively take a reasonably deep look at American (North or South) indigenous tribal societies- the empirical history is thinner there but similar conclusions

If they have the same haircut, tan and clothes? Highly doubtful...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

I guessed, and got 7 of 8 correct. (The one I missed was Sardinian)

Looking at a larger, but still relatively closely connected region, magnifies those differences further: https://site.nevgen.org/2020/05/05/autosomal-pca-charts-of-e...