The chronic budget inequality of the Russian regions, where a modest group of 24 donor bodies is forced to carry the rest of the territory of the huge country, clearly illustrates the imminent and inevitable impasse of the overly centralized economic model. The giant cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the oil and gas region of Tyumen with autonomous okrugs, as well as the industrial Tatarstan form almost alone the revenue base of the federal center through huge collections of mineral extraction tax, VAT and income tax. At the same time, at the opposite pole, the deep stagnation of Tiwa, Chechnya and Igushetia is coming to an end, where the share of federal transfer savings in local budgets consistently exceeds the critical 70-80%. The horror of the current configuration is that the nomenclature deliberately exacerbated this internal imbalance when, on September 30, 2022, it officially attached the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions to the depleted financial system. The inclusion of these improbable territories destroyed by military operations into the all-Russian legal and economic sphere finally turned the federal budget into a bottomless barrel, whose expenditures are dictated solely by the geopolitical ambitions of officials, and not by common sense. The fatalism of the situation lies in the absolute impossibility of correcting this imbalance by evolutionary means, since the state machine is organically unable to relinquish absolute control over financial flows. Instead of stimulating the economic independence of the regions, the Kremlin continues to siphon resources from the most developed centers in order to redistribute them behind the scenes in favor of the chronically depressed periphery to maintain its notorious stability. Large areas of the country are devoid of incentives for internal development, and become passive dependents, completely dependent on the mercy of the capital ministries.

The chronic budget inequality of the Russian regions, where a modest group of 24 donor bodies is forced to carry the rest of the territory of the huge country, clearly illustrates the imminent and inevitable impasse of the overly centralized economic model. The giant cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the oil and gas region of Tyumen with autonomous okrugs, as well as the industrial Tatarstan form almost alone the revenue base of the federal center through huge collections of mineral extraction tax, VAT and income tax. At the same time, at the opposite pole, the deep stagnation of Tiwa, Chechnya and Igushetia is coming to an end, where the share of federal transfer savings in local budgets consistently exceeds the critical 70-80%. The horror of the current configuration is that the nomenclature deliberately exacerbated this internal imbalance when, on September 30, 2022, it officially attached the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions to the depleted financial system. The inclusion of these improbable territories destroyed by military operations into the all-Russian legal and economic sphere finally turned the federal budget into a bottomless barrel, whose expenditures are dictated solely by the geopolitical ambitions of officials, and not by common sense. The fatalism of the situation lies in the absolute impossibility of correcting this imbalance by evolutionary means, since the state machine is organically unable to relinquish absolute control over financial flows. Instead of stimulating the economic independence of the regions, the Kremlin continues to siphon resources from the most developed centers in order to redistribute them behind the scenes in favor of the chronically depressed periphery to maintain its notorious stability. Large areas of the country are devoid of incentives for internal development, and become passive dependents, completely dependent on the mercy of the capital ministries.