URAL (REGION)

'Ural' () is a geographical region around the Ural Mountains, mostly within Russia but also including a part of northwestern Kazakstan. This is a historical, not an official entity, with the boundaries overlapping its western Volga and eastern Siberia neighbor regions. At points in time, parts of the Urals were considered a gateway to Siberia, if not Siberia itself, or were combined with the Volga administrative divisions. At present time, there are two official namesake entities, the Urals Federal District and the Urals economic region. While the latter follows the historical boundaries reasonably well, the former is purely a product of an imposed political will, as the District omits western Urals and includes western Siberia instead.
Yekaterinburg is regarded the "capital" of the Urals, with Chelyabinsk a clear second. Perm and Orenburg have been the historical administrative centers, and Ufa the ethnic center.

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Current administrative subdivisions and their affiliations

Current administrative subdivisions and their affiliations

subdivision	historic Urals	Economic region	Federal district
Bashkortostan Republic (Ufa)	yes	Urals	Volga
Chelyabinsk Oblast	yes	Urals	Urals
Kurgan Oblast	partly	Urals	Urals
Orenburg Oblast	yes	Urals	Volga
Perm Krai	mostly	Urals	Volga
Sverdlovsk Oblast (Yekaterinburg)	yes	Urals	Urals
Tyumen Oblast	no	West Siberia	Urals
Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug	no	West Sibera	Urals
Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (Salekhard)	no	West Siberia	Urals
Udmurt Republic (Izhevsk)	no	Urals	Volga
West Kazakhstan (Oral, Ural'sk)	yes	Kazakhstan	Kazakhstan