r of 80 km, and is located 80 km north of Nizhny Novgorod. It was discovered in 1965, the first such crater to be identified on the territory of Russia. For research purposes, the Vorotilovskoye deep borehole Vorotilovskaya deep borehole (5,374 m) was drilled near the center of the impact zone.
There is also a hypothesis that this feature is an ancient volcano that once erupted here and, after becoming completely extinct, was buried beneath layers of sedimentary rock. However, the discovery of impact structures — which form exclusively from the strike of a large meteorite — refuted this hypothesis.
Another name for the Puchezh-Katunki crater is the Vorotilovsky uplift.