Asymmetry of Sustainable Development of Regional Systems as a Threat to the Economic Security of the State

The article is devoted to the formulation of the author's approach to assessing the socio-economic opportunities of Russian regions in achieving their sustainable development goals. It is undeniable that the term "sustainable development" is reflected in the publications of domestic and foreign scientists, however, insufficient attention is paid to its connection with the definition of "economic security", which is the basic characteristic of any economic actor. The analysis of scientific papers allowed us to correlate these categories, confirming their coherence. Consequently, monitoring of indicators of sustainable development will contribute to the timely identification of negative activities that hinder the creation of conditions for socio-economic balance at the macro, meso and micro levels. It is appropriate to note that, despite the development by official statistics of a list of national indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals, their thresholds have not been established. In view of this, the purpose of the study is to develop indicators through which the state of the regional system can be determined from the standpoint of its internal abilities to ensure social equality, economic stability, and rational use of natural resources. The set of methods used in the research process consists of two groups: general scientific, private scientific. The first of them includes: analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction. Based on these tools, the relationship between such categories as "economic security" and "sustainable development" has been established. The second includes absolute and relative statistical values, ranking, classification. With their help, the Russian regions were ranked according to a number of criteria, without which the sustainable development of territories becomes illusory. The result of the study is the development and testing of a system of coefficients grouped taking into account the fundamental principles of sustainable development. Their list is presented by relative indicators that allow for an interregional comparison, the purpose of which is to identify the degree of asymmetry of meso-formations according to the parameters of sustainable development. The application of the proposed indicators is aimed at detecting prosperous and disadvantaged regions among Russian regions in order to prevent the increase of imbalances in the future.