The
Neman,
Nemunas,
Nyoman,
Niemen or
Memel, a major
Eastern European river, rises in
Belarus and flows through
Lithuania before draining into the
Curonian Lagoon, and then into the
Baltic Sea at
Klaipeda. It begins at the confluence of two smaller tributaries (map coordinates 53.348194,27.108377), about southwest of the town of
Uzda in central Belarus, and about southwest of
Minsk. In its lower reaches it forms the border between Lithuania and
Russia's
Kaliningrad Oblast. It also, very briefly, forms part of the
border between Lithuania and Belarus. The fourteenth-largest river in
Europe, the largest in Lithuania, and the third-largest in Belarus, the Neman is navigable for most of its length.