Alistair Gainey Nov 19, 2015:

'Country', not 'state' In this context, I'd use 'country' rather than 'state'. You could actually get away with merging the sentences and omitting the далеко не тем entirely; you've already got the совсем другое part, so perhaps the extra emphasis is not necessary. Indeed, if you really wanted to play around with it, you could just put something like 'Kazakhstan has changed beyond recognition in the past twenty-five years' (obviously, I don't know if that exact wording is appropriate in your case).