Largest lakes & reservoirs in Russia by water volume
The estimated volume of water that a lake contains is measured at the lake’s normal elevation. By this measure, the world’s largest freshwater lake is Siberia’s Lake Baikal.Water Volume can be measured in acre-feet, in cubic miles, or in cubic kilometers. One acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre (43,560 square feet) to a depth of one foot. One cubic mile equals 3,379,200 acre-feet. One cubic kilometer equals 810,713 acre-feet. 1 acre-foot is equal to 325,851 US gallons. Siberia’s Lake Baikal contains about 6,276,367,740,000,000 gallons of freshwater – nearly 1 million gallons for every living person on earth.
The other – and more widely used – measure of a lake’s size is the lake’s surface acreage. By that measure, the world’s largest freshwater lake is North America’s Lake Superior.
Note: In the United States, an acre foot is a unit of volume used to refer to large-scale bodies of water. It is defined by the volume of water needed to cover 1 acre of surface area to a depth of 1 foot.
You can find many of the the world’s largest lakes (by water volume) on LakeLubbers. Note: For some lakes, the water volume data is unknown or does not apply, so you may see fewer lakes than the total 6 articles we have published for Russia lakes.
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Below are lakes within Russia > Compared by water volume. This list does not represent all lakes in Russia, only the 6 Russia lake articles we have published on the LakeLubbers website.
Lake name  |
Water vol. in ac-ft |
Lake description |
|---|---|---|
| Caspian Sea (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Northern Caucases Region, Russia, Povolzhsky Region, Russia, Russia, Turkmenistan) |
62,424,915,900 ac-ft | (Also known as Mazandaran Sea, Khazar Sea, Khvalyn Sea) With the largest volume of any saltwater “lake” on earth, the Caspian Sea holds well over 62 billion acre-feet of saltwater. Many classify the Caspian… |
| Lake Baikal, Russia (Eastern Siberia Region, Russia, Russia) |
19,261,440,000 ac-ft | (Also known as Lake Baykal, Sacred Sea, Pearl of Siberia, Blue Eye of Siberia, Galapagos of Russia) Russia’s national treasure, Lake Baikal, is the world’s deepest lake and is our planet’s largest freshwater lake measured by water volume. Its bottom… |
| Lake Ladoga, Russia (North-Western Region, Russia, Russia) |
736,127,580 ac-ft | (Also known as Lake Laatokka, Ladozhskoye Ozero) Located 25 miles north of St. Petersburg, Russia’s Lake Ladoga is the largest freshwater body in Europe with a surface area of 4,481,238 acres. The am… |
| Bratsk Reservoir, Russia (Eastern Siberia Region, Russia, Russia) |
137,229,339 ac-ft | It has been said that one of the most striking things about Siberia is the scale. Just the name conjures images of vast snowy expanses, impossibly thi… |
| Kuybyshev Reservoir, Russia (Povolzhsky Region, Russia, Russia) |
46,453,866 ac-ft | (Also known as Kuybyshevskoye Reservoir, Kuibyshev Reservoir) The Kuybyshev Reservoir or Kuybyshevskoye Reservoir is a 1,593,823-acre lake in the middle of the Volga and lower Kama rivers in west central (Middle… |
| Rybinsk Reservoir, Russia (Central Russia, Northern Russia, Russia) |
20,592,115 ac-ft | (Also known as Rybinsk Sea) Located in western European Russia, Rybinsk Reservoir is as large and impressive as Russia itself. Rybinsk Reservoir sits on the Volga River as part o… |