Russia vs South Africa

Russia is 14 times larger than South Africa — 17,098,242 against 1,219,090 km². Russia is 2.2 times more populous than South Africa — 143,513,328 against 64,747,319 people.

Side by side

Population density

South Africa is 6.3 times more densely populated than Russia — 53 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

• They drive on opposite sides — Russia on the right, South Africa on the left.
• Different currencies: the Russian ruble and the South African rand.
• Russia spans 11 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — Europe and Africa.

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.

South Africa

One of only a handful of countries with more than one capital, and the only one with three. The Vredefort Dome south-west of Johannesburg is the largest verified impact crater on Earth, about 300 km across and 2 billion years old. The Cape Floral Region packs roughly 9,000 plant species into a small corner of the country, most of them found nowhere else.

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.