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
Caspian Sea Monster fly high. In the 1980s, after the KM was already destroyed, the United States discovered it was a large ekranoplan. The development of ground effect vehicles was not as widespread in the West as in the Soviet Union. Caspian Sea Monster The KM (Korabl Maket) (Russian: Корабль-макет, literally "Ship-prototype"), known colloquially as the Caspian Sea Monster, was a Soviet experimental ground effect vehicle (ekranoplan) developed by the Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau in the 1960s. The KM began operation in 1966, and was continuously tested by the Soviet Navy until 1980, when it was destroyed in a testing accident and sank