What is the longest river in Europe?
The longest river in Europe is the Volga, in Russia. It is 3,645 kilometres long and is the 15th longest river in the world. It is also Europe's largest river in terms of discharge, with 8,060 cubic metres per second.
The Volga is a great river in every respect. Its drainage basin has a surface area of 1,350,000 square kilometres, making it the 18th largest one in the world.
Its source is in the Valdai Hills, 228 metres above sea level, and it flows through ten Russian oblasts (Tver, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Ivanovo, Nizhny Novgorod, Ulyanovsk, Samara, Saratov, Volgograd and Astrakhan) and three republics (Mari El, Chuvashia and Tatarstan).
It flows into the Caspian Sea, and almost its entire course is navigable. The Volga's main tributaries are the Kama and the Oka rivers, and it has a total of about 200 tributaries.
The Volga has the largest river delta in Europe. It is formed when the largest river system in Europe, the Volga, flows into the Caspian Sea, in the Russian oblast of Astrakhan, north-east of the Republic of Kalmykia.
The delta is located in the Caspian depression. The far eastern part of the delta lies in Kazakhstan. The delta drains into the Caspian Sea approximately 60 kilometres downstream from the city of Astrakhan.
The delta has grown significantly in the 20th century because of changes in the level of the Caspian Sea. Its surface area has increased from 3,222 square kilometres in 1880, to its current surface area of 27,224 square kilometres, measuring approximately 160 kilometres across.