The volga river

                        The Volga River

• The Volga River is the longest river of Europe. It flows throughcentral Russia and it´s the national river of it`´. Eleven of the twenty largest cities of Russia, including the capital, Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage basin. Some of the largest reservoirs in the world can be found along the Volga. The river has a symbolic meaning in Russian culture and is often referred to as Volga-Matushka (Mother Volga) in Russian literature and folklore. It belongs to the closed basin of the Caspian Sea. Rising in the Valdai Hills 225 meters above the sea level northwest of Moscow and about 320 kilimeters south-east Saint Petersburg, the Volga heads east past Lake Sterzh, Tver, Dubna, Rybinsk, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan. From there it turns south, flows past Ulyanovsk, Tolyatti, Samara, Saratov and Volgograd, and discharges into the Caspian Sea below Astrakhan at 28 meters below sea level. At its most strategic point, it bends towards the Don.