Poland vs Russia

Russia is 55 times larger than Poland — 17,098,242 against 312,685 km². Russia is 3.9 times more populous than Poland — 143,513,328 against 36,435,861 people.

Side by side

Population density

Poland is 14 times more densely populated than Russia — 117 against 8 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• Different currencies: the Polish złoty and the Russian ruble.
• Russia spans 11 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.

Poland

The Wieliczka salt mine near Kraków has been worked since the 13th century and holds chapels, chandeliers and statues carved entirely from rock salt, about 300 m down. Białowieża on the Belarusian border is the last large fragment of the primeval forest that once covered the European plain.

Russia

The largest country in the world by land area, close to twice the size of the next one, and it spans eleven time zones. Lake Baikal in Siberia is the deepest lake on Earth at 1,642 m and holds roughly a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water — more than all five North American Great Lakes combined. Russia and China each border fourteen countries, more than any other state.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.