The article represents a short version of scenario-based forecast of development of Ukraine and the Russian-Ukrainian relations, prepared in July 2008. The forecast has not been published previously. Subsequent developments have fully confirmed the anticipated, although at the time of the forecast preparation a lot of things would seem futurological fiction on the tails of probability distributions. Assessments of the state and prospects of the Ukraine development, made in 2008, are of practical interest today.

Opening address of editor-in-chief.

Crimean events — the significant information signal of the new world era beginning, the era that came to substitute the epoch associated with the Soviet Union collapse. In these circumstances, the strategic role of Russia as a guarantor — operator of the system for global and regional balances maintenance allows it to permanently integrate into the system mechanisms determining the contours of the global macroeconomic models and well-being of national and international economic and political institutions: Russia is back among the great powers.

Opening address of editor-in-chief.

Macro-strategic game of world actors around the oil prices — is not a matter of business, it is a matter of global domination. If Russia sustains translated from abroad strategic trend of macro-organized instability in the form of geo-manipulated oil prices decline, it will mean that the Russian model is not inferior to the US and the EU ones as the main models of forming basic segments of society that finally confirms our status: return among the great powers. Statement of the new forces alignment in the global economy: a legal succession of modern Russia (Third Rome) from the Byzantine, then the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as one of the world’s key political, economic and civilizational centers has occurred.

Opening address of editor-in-chief.

Opening address of editor-in-chief.

Strategic nature of innovative technologies race in the global economy requires to form in Russia a systemic organizational-information structure, which will serve as the center of integrated management, including strategic planning of complex development in the science and engineering field through network concentration of scientific-technical ties in key areas of knowledge.

Opening address of editor-in-chief.

As follows from the calculation of the integral indices of the RF subjects social potential, determined based on the multifactor model methodology called “Strategic Matrix of the RF region”, worked out by the Institute for Economic Strategies, the development of social conditions cannot be considered even and uniform. Good data is demonstrated in those three of the nine factors that are directly related to reanimation of economic growth in the country — these factors are “Employment”, “Living conditions” and “Crime”.