Interest in the problems of territorial development has a long history. And although the forms of territorial administration have evolved, its strategic goals have remained unchanged – using the potential of the regions to solve national and local problems. But “immutability of goals” is not “immutability of mechanisms”. And this fact was once again confirmed by the short recent history of Russia. At first, the eyes of the scientific community and practitioners were turned to the mechanisms of transition to a system of federal relations different from the Soviet one. Then, the problem began to be considered in the context of the search for an optimum between centralization and decentralization in the system of state territorial administration. Today, against the background of the rejection of the unconditional priority of the liberal model of economic development and the recognition of the importance of strategic planning, there is a rejection of the policy of developing a federal form of national statehood in favor of its unitary form. In the opinion of many, this drew a line under the long-standing discussion about the prospects of the Russian model of federalism. However, even if we interpret what is happening in this way, the search for mechanisms to overcome differences in the levels of socio-economic development of regions remains relevant, research continues to specify the measure of responsibility of authorities and administrations of the subjects of the Federation for the development of regional economies, and the search for ways to improve the model of inter-budgetary relations is far from complete. And since these and other tasks have long been proposed to be solved within the framework of the development of a federal form of national statehood, it remains to be seen how much better they can be handled by implementing, in fact, a unitary state regional policy. Therefore, there are grounds to assert that the scientific field “economics of federal relations” has not exhausted its potential. The article attempts to substantiate this point of view.

Over the past 20 years, Russia’s municipal legislation has developed without a clear conceptual framework, evolving through ad hoc responses to changing circumstances. The adoption of a new federal law on local self-government in March 2025 raises a crucial question: does this legislation continue the trend of tactical regulatory adjustments, or does it reflect a deliberate strategy for developing local governance? To answer this question, the article attempts to analyze the new local government law through a factor-based approach. The analysis focuses on two key factors that shaped the law’s content: spatial (geography and demographics) and functional (instruments of governance). The author concludes that the law does reflect a strategic approach to local governance development, primarily manifesting in two trends: (1) consolidation of municipal entities and (2) expansion of regional authorities’ powers in defining local government competencies. However, the study also identifies risks associated with this strategy, particularly the potential decline in social effectiveness of local governance due to weakened connections between authorities and local communities. The research findings emphasize the need to maintain balance between operational efficiency and social effectiveness when implementing the new legal framework.

The most important priority of the spatial development of the Russian Federation in accordance with the new Spatial Development Strategy is the system of anchor settlements that form the settlement systems, infrastructure and economy of the Russian Federation and ensure the development of adjacent territories. Master plans are planned for some of the main settlements. The article examines the issues brought to life by the identification of anchor settlements as drivers of the development of the Russian socio-economic space and which are the subject of discussions and discussions. To what extent does the focus on the development of anchor settlements reflect the continuity of the spatial development policy of the Russian Federation? What problems arise in connection with the need to include the concept of a master plan in Russian legislation? Within the framework of the strategic planning system, special attention is paid to the issues of subordination of spatial development documents.

The new urban development tool, master plans, began to be used in 2021. Initially, they were planned to be used for 25 cities in the Far East, but it became not only a building plans, but a vector for the long-term development of territories. While master plans are characterized by a lack of flexibility and turn into formal documents, it is assumed that the development of master plans will resolve these problems by ensuring a balance between the interests of residents, businesses, authorities and investors. At the same time, uncertainty about the status and content of the master plans provokes various conflicts, in particular, with urban planning regulations and plans for land use and development, since the master plan is currently not integrated into the hierarchy of urban planning documentation. Its advantage, on the one hand, is that the procedure for adopting this development tool is poorly regulated by regulations, so it remains flexible and comprehensive. But on the other hand, the lack of regulation of the master plan by the norms of legislation can lead to increased corruption in its implementation. Today there are many gaps in the regulatory support of master plans that affect the effectiveness of their practical implementation. The article concludes that it is necessary to carefully study the regulatory framework in order to avoid collisions of master plans with other urban planning documents and documents of territorial and strategic planning, as well as to avoid overregulation of this new tool for the development of territories.

The preliminary results of 2024 indicate that the overall positive dynamics of revenues of the consolidated budgets of the subjects of the Russian Federation. Certain differences in the dynamics of own revenues of regional budgets are observed for regions with the dominance of the manufacturing industry and regions with extractive specialization. The growth of tax revenues in real terms in 2024 took place for personal income tax and taxes on total income. At the same time, there was a reduction in corporate income tax receipts. For a number of subjects of the Russian Federation, the increase in personal income tax receipts did not compensate for the reduction in corporate income tax. Transfer receipts from the federal budget continued to decline, although there was a positive trend in some of them. The change in the structure of gratuitous receipts demonstrates a shift in favor of their target types. The dynamics of regional budget expenditures generally followed the dynamics of income. Financing of only some sections of expenses grew at a rate faster than inflation. The total deficit of the consolidated budgets of the subjects of the Russian Federation at the end of the year turned out to be significantly less than planned. The volume of government sub—federal debt decreased slightly, but at the same time the share of debt on bank loans, the most expensive source of financing, increased.

In the last decade, the government has been taking measures to stimulate innovation in agriculture, but the level of scientific and technological development of the industry does not meet public needs. The innovative activity of agricultural producers is lower than the average for the economy. The import of agricultural technologies is significantly inferior to exports, which creates risks for food security. The article analyzes the problems of scientific and technological development of the agricultural sector and substantiates ways to solve them: overcoming departmental disunity in the organization of agricultural science management; increasing the volume and optimizing the structure of financing agricultural research; reorganizing the network of state agricultural research institutes and experimental farms; stimulating the influx of young scientists into agricultural science.

The changing external conditions of recent years have led to a transformation of the existing mechanisms that determine the Russian fiscal sphere. The paper shows that since 2022, the budget of the expanded government has become more dependent on internal factors than on parameters related to the global situation. The receipt of oil and gas revenues of the federal budget has come to be influenced not only by the price of oil and the exchange rate, but also by restrictions on oil production caused by both external sanctions and voluntary restrictions. At the same time, the sensitivity of oil and gas revenues to the price of oil has increased. The growth of non-oil and gas revenues partly compensates for the restrictions on the receipt of oil and gas revenues but is largely ensured by the budget impulse. In this regard, an increase in the tax burden on the non-oil and gas sector is seen as an inevitable measure for future budget sustainability. The possibilities of debt financing are limited by the capacity of the domestic market and the monetary policy pursued. At the same time, using the imperfections of the financial market, the state can reduce the cost of servicing the domestic debt.

Bioeconomy has become one of the most dynamic and promising sectors of the world economy, which has proven opportunities to use biotechnology to reduce production costs, obtain fundamentally new products, including those that reduce the anthropogenic impact on the environment or fundamentally transform sectors of the economy. With this in mind, we analyze the experience in the bioeconomy development of some countries in the Asian region, including China and India, the largest in terms of population, as well as several other countries (Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia), leading in terms of innovation activity. Some features of economic activity systems organization in these countries related to the productive forces and production relations state, as well as the functioning of bioproducts markets are characterized. Based on the identified features of bioeconomy institutional development in ten countries of eastern, southeast and south Asia, a generalized functional model of bioeconomy organization was formed. In addition, a qualitative analysis of biotechnologies creating and using process organization for the development of national bioeconomies was carried out. Аs a result, the author was able to identify the main determinants of bioeconomy development in the countries of the this region.

Eurasian countries have historically been participants in various programs, project initiatives and regional alliances, and under the new conditions, the importance of transport projects has multiplied. At the same time, as the discourse of terminology use grows so does the confusion in the conceptual apparatuses of various scientific and applied contexts related to infrastructure initiatives. Systematization of data and fixation of new trends in the development of the Eurasian transport and logistics network is hampered by the lack of comparable data on the so-called “big” continental transport initiatives. The article analyzes individual global and regional transport initiatives in Eurasia, which at different times were perceived as competing. It is noted that in the Russian-language literature there is increasing confusion between the corridors of the agreed EAEU list, the transport projects of the defunct EurAsEC and the routes of the EDB transport framework concept. In English-language sources, the context in which international and Eurasian transport terminology is used depends largely on countries and/or institutions. It is concluded that currently no global infrastructure initiative can compete with the Chinese “Belt and Road” project. Given the complexity of the geopolitical situation in Eurasia, China’s multivariate approach to route alignment and interconnections allows global and regional trade not to “freeze”, deliver cargo and continue to interact with the countries of the continent in a bilateral format.