Russia is not as big as it seems. The difference comes from the representation of an ellipsoid planet on a flat map. This is what Russia looks like without cartographic distortion

19 comments

1. Now look at the UK 🙂 how a minuscule island has done so much historically.

2. Damn this would be painful for the ~~dictator~~ president

3. Russia is almost 19 000 000 km² the next country Canada is half that it’s still huge and when you have China with almost 9 000 000km² near to it being almost the same size your projection doesn’t work as well.

4. Seems wrong. If you try to put them together, they don‘t fit (especially China and Russia).

5. is this some sort of trolling?

6. If you look closer you can see that China and Russia don’t fit. Either Russia is far too small or China ir far too large.

7. [It looks like Russia just got out of the pool.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=85MZ4c1EWkM)

8. Still the largest country on earth

9. Have you been to Russia at all? I feel so exhausted after wasting my time on traveling between cities. It’s not as big as it seems. Its bigger.

10. It’s not always like that, it’s because of cold.

11. No shit! 😯

12. О, европейцы изучают географию и правила проекции сферы на плоскость, умнички какие. Правильно, не будьте как министр иностранных дел Британии.

13. What. The. Fuck.

    My life is a lie

14. > This is what Russia looks like without cartographic distortion

    Wrong. The angles are distorted.

15. This is stupid. If you want to see how big a country is, go look at a globe (virtual or otherwise), don’t trick yourself with deceptive projections.

16. There is [the site](https://thetruesize.com/) for that. Russia is almost twice as big as whole Europe (because many European countries are also subject of Mercator projection distortion).

17. Russia’s size is overblown on maps, as is much of North America and Europe. At the same time, in the southern hemisphere, everything appears much smaller than it should be. For instance, South American nations appear much smaller than they actually are, but no continent is more affected by this than Africa.

    Africa is almost comically massive, and so are many of its nations, but on most maps, it looks just slightly smaller than North America, when it’s only surpassed in size by the entirety of Asia.

    That being said, Russia should not be that proportionately small compared to its neighbors. It’s still the biggest country on Earth.

18. Russia isn’t that small, just look at a globe. On this map Russia looks like it not even bigger than Europe which is ridiculous.

19. Something is not right, if you look at the borders, you can see that the southernmost states are much bigger than they should be. For example, Manchuria is much bigger than the shape of the Russian border.