METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO STUDYING THE CRITICAL IMPORT DEPENDENCE OF A REGION UNDER SANCTIONS

The dynamically transforming geoeconomic environment predetermines new formats and institutions for the development of countries and regions. The changes primarily affect perturbations in the generation of international supply chains, which trigger the formation of new, including non-market, configurations of economic processes both within national economic systems and beyond their borders. Under these conditions, traditional models of economic growth may lose their relevance. This situation emphasizes the need to define and refine the principles of organizing and developing foreign economic activity according to the rapidly changing conditions of economic management, whose erosion is reflected in intensifying sanctions on the geoeconomic agenda. This determines the need to focus on the implementation of import substitution policies, which include identifying product categories critical to economic systems and supplied from abroad in the context of ongoing systemic transformations. Given the relevance of the research topic, this article attempts to develop an algorithm for three-level authentication (filtering) in the process of identifying critical imports. The object of the study is the Volga Federal District (Russia) and the specifics of its import dependence under a transforming external environment. The subject of the study is the methodological approaches that define the process of identifying critically important products supplied from abroad with due regard to structural and geoeconomic changes. Based on the analysis of extensive data on imports into the Volga Federal District from 2015 to 2022 (a total of 824 observations), critical types of products have been identified that determine the prospects for the sustainable development of regional economies considering the transforming external environment.