The Urals are a long line of mountains running north to south through Russia, roughly 2,500 kilometres from the Arctic Ocean down towards Kazakhstan. Geographers usually take them as the dividing line between Europe and Asia — which is why they matter far beyond geography class. When people say 'east of the Urals', they mean Siberia, the huge and thinly populated part of Russia, and the phrase carries a feeling of remoteness. The name is nearly always plural and takes 'the': the Urals, and the plural verb — 'the Urals are rich in minerals'. You will also meet the longer form 'the Ural Mountains', and the singular adjective form 'Ural' in names like the Ural River (a different thing, flowing down to the Caspian Sea) and the city Yekaterinburg's region. They are old, worn-down mountains, not high and sharp like the Alps or the Himalayas — the tallest is under 1,900 metres — but they hold enormous amounts of iron, copper, and gemstones, and Russia built much of its heavy industry there. During the Second World War, factories were moved east of the Urals to keep them safe from German attack.