Russia vs Ukraine

Russia is 28 times larger than Ukraine — 17,098,242 against 603,550 km². Russia is 3.7 times more populous than Ukraine — 143,513,328 against 38,980,376 people.

Side by side

Population density

Ukraine is 7.7 times more densely populated than Russia — 65 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 Russian ruble and the Ukrainian hryvnia.
• Russia spans 11 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.

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.

Ukraine

The largest country entirely within Europe. About a quarter of the world's chernozem — the deep black soil that makes grain farming so productive — lies here. The Carpathians in the west reach 2,061 m, and the rest of the country is largely steppe drained by the Dnieper.

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.