Black Sea–Caspian Steppe The Manych Depression is not much more than 65 feet above sea level and the area around Astrakhan and part of Kalmykia is below sea level. Rivers: Through the center runs the northwest-tending Kuma-Manych Depression. This was once a strait connecting the Black and Caspian Seas and is now marked by the Manych River which is basically a chain of lakes. It will probably be the route of the Eurasia Canal if that great engineering work is ever built. In the south the rivers that flow north from the Caucasus are caught by the west-flowing Kuban River and the east-flowing
Black Sea of the Black Sea reaches a maximum depth of just south of Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula. The littoral zone of the Black Sea is often referred to as the Pontic littoral or Pontic zone. The area surrounding the Black Sea is commonly referred to as the "Black Sea Region". Its northern part lies within the "Chernozem belt" (black soil belt) which goes from eastern Croatia (Slavonia), along the Danube (northern Serbia, northern Bulgaria (Danubian Plain) and southern Romania (Wallachian Plain)) to northeast Ukraine and further across the Central Black Earth Region and southern Russia into Siberia. The Black Sea