Kura (Caspian Sea) drained and reservoirs were created to facilitate development of irrigation in the lower Kura valley. In the 1950s and 1960s, when the Caucasus region was part of the Soviet Union, construction of many of the reservoirs and waterworks in the Kura basin began. Of the major reservoirs in the Kura catchment, one of the earliest was at Varvara in 1952. Large scale construction of dams continued until the 1970s. Kura (Caspian Sea) The Kura (; ; , "Mt’k’vari"; , "Kur"; , "Cyrus"; , "Kuruš" ) is an east-flowing river south of the Greater Caucasus Mountains which drains the southern slopes
Pontic–Caspian steppe shore of the Caspian Sea in the Dagestan region of Russia, but the drier Caspian lowland desert lies between the Pontic steppe and the northwestern and northern shores of the Caspian. The Kazakh Steppe bounds the Pontic steppe on the southeast. The Ponto-Caspian seas are the remains of the Turgai Sea, an extension of the Paratethys which extended south and east of the Urals and covering much of today's West Siberian Plain in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Pontic–Caspian steppe The Pontic–Caspian steppe, Pontic steppe or Ukrainian steppe is the vast steppeland stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea