In recent years, Moscow’s budgetary policy toward national republics and regional subjects has transformed toward rigid centralisation. Under the slogans of “strengthening the vertical power structure,” the federal centre has consistently dismantled the remnants of financial autonomy in regions that generate the country’s primary wealth—oil, gas, minerals, and timber resources. Although revenues from exploiting the subsoil of Siberia, the Volga region, and the North form the backbone of the RF state budget, the regions themselves have been turned into subsidised territories dependent on handouts from Moscow.
The tax redistribution mechanism is designed so that the bulk of revenues from major extractive companies concentrates in the federal centre, while local budgets receive only meagre crumbs, insufficient to support social spheres, schools, hospitals, and roads. Even those regions formally holding the status of republics with their own constitutions are stripped of the right to independently manage their natural resources or establish tax incentives for local business development.
Such an economic noose serves as a political instrument to suppress any separatist or autonomist sentiments. Any leader of a national republic who dares to criticise the centre or demand a fair distribution of funds is instantly removed from office or becomes the target of criminal prosecution. Under these conditions, economic decolonisation and returning financial flows to the control of local communities become vital necessities for the survival and development of indigenous nations.
