Map of the Week
Kazakhstan is bigger than Western Europe
Laid over Europe at true scale, Kazakhstan stretches from France to the Black Sea. It is the world's ninth-largest country and the largest with no coastline.
Kazakhstan covers about 2.7 million square kilometres. That makes it the ninth-largest country on Earth and the largest one without access to the open ocean.
Most people underestimate it, partly because world maps in the Mercator projection shrink places closer to the equator and inflate those near the poles. To compare fairly, both shapes here are drawn in equal-area projections centred on each country, then placed on top of each other.
How to read this map
The outline of Kazakhstan keeps its true shape and size. Moving a country across a map in a single projection would distort it, so each shape gets its own projection before the overlay.
