South Africa vs Ukraine

South Africa is 2.0 times larger than Ukraine — 1,219,090 against 603,550 km². South Africa is 1.7 times more populous than Ukraine — 64,747,319 against 38,980,376 people.

Side by side

Population density

Ukraine is 1.2 times more densely populated than South Africa — 65 against 53 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 — South Africa on the left, Ukraine on the right.
• Different currencies: the South African rand and the Ukrainian hryvnia.
• Different continents — Africa and Europe.

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.

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.