Different Territories, Different Solutions: How to Plan Development in New Regions

In practice, however, these processes are already running in parallel. At the same time, territories within a single region differ markedly in terms of infrastructure condition, site readiness, land and property relations, and the capacity to launch economic and investment projects.

Strategic planning must therefore recognize that the transition from recovery to development does not happen simultaneously across an entire region, but rather as individual territories and projects become ready. The object of planning should be not only the Russian federal subject as a whole, but also individual municipalities, agglomerations, industrial sites, transport hubs, and zones of prospective housing development.

One Strategy – Different Territories

Differences are evident not only among the four regions, but also between territories within each of them. According to the Ministry of Construction's report on SEZ operations as of December 31, 2024, the LPR had 108 zone participants, the DPR had 98, Zaporizhzhia Oblast had 40, and Kherson Oblast had 24. Under a unified legal regime, the gap between the LPR and Kherson Oblast was 4.5 times. In Zaporizhzhia Oblast, the number of participants grew from 9 in 2023 to 40 in 2024; in Kherson Oblast, from 1 to 24. The high growth rates here largely reflect a low starting base. This is not an assessment of regional investment readiness, but a clear indicator of varying intensity in the use of the same investment instrument. The number of participants is simultaneously influenced by the timing of the mechanism's launch, business composition, site availability, infrastructure condition, security, administrative project readiness, and demand for support measures. Overall, by the end of 2024, the SEZ registry contained 265 organizations; their declared investment volume was estimated at approximately 115 billion rubles, and the number of jobs in the projects exceeded 82,000. This confirms that the investment mechanism has already become part of development practice, though the intensity of its use varies by territory. Meanwhile, the recovery agenda remains substantial in scale. According to the Ministry of Construction, since 2022, specialists from the Unified Customer in Construction production and procurement company have restored more than 2,600 facilities in the new regions. This shows that infrastructure recovery and the launch of investment mechanisms are already proceeding in parallel.