About Omsk
Omsk is a city and the administrative center of Omsk Oblast, Russia, located in southwestern Siberia 2,236 kilometers (1,389 mi) from Moscow. Omsk acts as an essential transport node, serving as a train station for Trans-Siberian Railway and as a staging post for the Irtysh River. The wooden fort of Omsk was built in 1716 by a cossack unit led by Ivan Buchholz to protect the expanding Russian frontier along the Ishim and the Irtysh rivers against the Kyrgyz and Dzungar nomads of the Steppes. Average daily temperatures, taken over the past three decades, are +20 °C (68 °F) for July and −17 °C (1 °F) for January, although summer temperatures can be much higher and winter ones much lower.