The paper examines the potential of criminalistic science, understood as an applied legal discipline, to enhance mechanisms for combating crimes carried out using information and communication technologies (ICT). The key problems identified are: that ICT-mediated offender–victim communications occur remotely, that both the preparation and commission of offenses are carefully concealed, and that crime traces are often obscured by modern technologies. These factors create substantial difficulties for law enforcement in establishing offenders’ locations, identities, and other circumstances essential to detection, investigation, and prevention. While large-scale technical and legal measures at the state level are necessary, the authors argue that criminalists should also prioritize a multidimensional analysis of the communicative component of ICT-enabled crimes. The study finds that the prevailing media narrative that «anyone can become a victim of fraud» is counterproductive: it demoralizes citizens and hampers the identification and investigation of such offences. The paper recommends revising approaches to studying victims’ identities and developing targeted, specialized investigative methods for particular categories of ICT-enabled crimes in the context of digital transformation.

The anti-Russian «sanctions» have led to the need for Russian business entities to use offshore companies to organize maritime transportation and the sale of petroleum products. From the point of view of private international law, these actions can be qualified as a special case of circumvention of law. In unfriendly countries, circumvention of anti-Russian «sanctions» is seen as an attempt to circumvent overriding mandatory rules (prevailing imperative provisions). The concept of the «shadow» fleet lacks a clear statutory definition, despite being referenced in the «sanctions» acts of unfriendly countries. The absence of a definition facilitates abuses by foreign regulators against vessels controlled by Russian entities. To overcome illegal «sanction» restrictions in international settlements for maritime transportation and cargo sales, Russian entities are forced to utilize multi-layered ownership structures for vessels through foreign jurisdictions and new payment instruments, which are wholly or partially subject to foreign legal systems. Due to the large-scale «sanctions», the theory of circumvention of law in private international law has acquired substantial empirical material that requires serious theoretical analysis.

The paper presents the results of a doctrinal and comparative study of criminal legislation and practice concerning liability for cartel conduct, and analyzes the constituent elements (corpus delicti) of the relevant offence. It is shown that the legal object of the offence is the state of the market for goods, works and services, i.e., the institutional conditions that afford formally equal economic actors equal opportunities to obtain profit and enable consumers to choose among available offers. The double reference to «restrictions on competition» in Part 1 of Article 178 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation does not expand the catalogue of criminally relevant elements. The statutory disposition, which names the offence and describes the prohibited conduct, is formulated in general criminal-law terms, while the concrete content of the proscribed behavior is determined by sectoral economic regulation. The study further demonstrates that quantitative (value-based) thresholds (for example, the amount of income or benefit) are employed to assess the public danger of the act and to delimit administrative responsibility from criminal responsibility. Such thresholds indicate the scale of unlawful activity rather than merely its economic outcome, thereby imparting a criminal character to the conduct. The author emphasizes the relevance of actual «causing of damage:» competitor conduct (e.g., price-fixing, market-division, discriminatory contract terms) can inflict tangible harm on other market participants. Finally, the paper identifies and explicates several non-obvious qualifying elements of the offence under considertion.

Modern criminal law science faces the acute problem of finding a new approach to scientific and methodological support for the effectiveness of criminal policy. The urgency of this problem is due to a number of circumstances. On the one hand, there are growing shortcomings in criminal legislation, including excessive and duplicative criminalization, imbalance in sanctions, over-dynamism and haphazard changes, shortcomings in legislative technology, intra- and inter-branch inconsistencies, excessive politicization and the active use of criminal law tools in solving current social problems. On the other hand, scholarly criticism and proposals for improving criminal legislation are often characterized by a speculative and formal-legal approach. Given the prevalence of law-making defects, there is a need to develop and adopt a concept of criminal law policy, but this does not fundamentally solve the problem of the quality of the criminal law itself. In our opinion, its meaningful solution lies in a three-pronged law-conforming approach that is new to science and practice, including a lawconforming legal understanding of criminal law, a law-conforming concept and implementation of criminal law policy, and a law-conforming criminal code that will ensure their consistency, interdependence, and effectiveness. This approach holds significance not only within the criminal law field but also has interdisciplinary and general theoretical value, serving as a foundation for law-conforming legal understanding and law-conforming legal policy (the concept of «law as law-conformity»).

Currently, across all areas of societal organization and state activity in Russia, the rapid spread of innovative developments and digital technologies — automated data processing, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence — enabling high-speed information exchange makes it imperative to adopt digital transformation tools quickly and efficiently, not only for organizational functioning but also to support interaction among the main elements of the legal system. The fundamental concepts for the digital development of the judicial and law-enforcement systems, to be adopted in the near future, envisage interaction with civil society institutions — primarily human-rights organizations — to ensure the protection of citizens’ rights and freedoms and the interests of business entities. In the context of changing public relations, changes in legislation in the field of innovative and digital technologies, the trends in the development of modern judicial, as well as law enforcement and human rights systems in the field of integrated interaction will be directly related to their use for mutual exchange of experience, advanced training and ensuring intersystem interaction in the process of implementing the target functions provided for by legislation and fulfilling the tasks set by the state and society.

When an economic entity concludes and implements a monopoly agreement, the antimonopoly authority issues an order to stop illegal behavior, confiscates illegally obtained income and imposes a fine. At the same time, the confiscation of illegal income and the imposition of a fine are independent, but accompanying measures of responsibility, which in principle are subject to joint application. However, in practice, given the difficulties in accurately identifying illegal income, an approach is often used whereby an administrative fine absorbs illegal income. When calculating the amount of the fine, the statutory concept of «revenue for the previous year» should be understood as the total revenue of an economic entity in mainland China for the previous calendar year, and not just revenue received from the sale of goods or services related to monopolistic behavior. This interpretation is the result of a systematic analysis of the provisions on liability for monopolistic actions, regulatory objectives, a low percentage penalty limit, as well as a comparative legal analysis of the legislation of other countries and seems optimal in the context of current legal regulation. When determining the specific percentage rate of a fine, the antimonopoly authority has discretionary powers and must take into account the degree of harm caused by monopolistic behavior, the subjective guilt of the business entity, as well as whether the amount of the fine will have the necessary deterrent effect to eventually ensure compliance between the severity of the offense and the measures of responsibility.

A comparative legal analysis of the legal regulatory systems for energy resource markets in the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union has revealed general and specific trends in the development of legal regulation for relations concerning energy (energy resources) and has identified certain directions for the convergence of national legislations of the EAEU member states in the energy sector. The general trends in the development of the system of legal regulation of energy resources markets in the EAEU Member States, in particular, include: the development of competition and market relations in the energy sector; facilitation of new energy technologies; greening energy; the development of the nuclear industry; the complexity of legal regulation of relations in the energy sector. Despite the coincidence of the main directions of energy development and their corresponding legal forms and mechanisms, the state, level, and completeness of legal regulation of market relations in the energy sector in the EAEU member states vary. The legal paradigm of the energy sector of the EAEU member states is characterized by a focus on creating conditions for the development of competitive traditional and new energy sectors, and a gradual transition from predominantly public law to sustainable private law regulation of energy markets. The similarities and differences in legal approaches actualize the tasks of developing national systems of legal regulation of energy resources markets in order to preserve energy sovereignty without hindering the harmonization of energy legislation of the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union and the creation of common energy markets of the member states.

The paper examines the general theoretical and civilistic construction of subjective law. Analyzing the general options for possible behavior of legal entities, such as the right to commit their own actions, the right to demand the fulfillment of a legal obligation, the right to apply to a competent state body for protection, the author concludes that the structure of legitimate behavior of participants in civil transactions in relation to digital objects is identical. In order to clarify the foundations of the functioning of the digital environment and the specifics of the protection of subjective rights in the digital environment, the extrapolation method is used and the possibility of extending the general civil law principles to relations arising in the digital space is considered. The paper substantiates the expediency of applying general civil law principles to disputes arising in connection with the violation of subjective rights in the digital environment. At the same time, the author argues that such principles do not take into account all the specifics of the interaction of subjects, and therefore formulates special principles: the principle of total accounting for actions, the principle of using agreed technologies, and the principle of access control. The paper also provides a scientific search for an answer to the question of whether the grounds for the emergence of subjective rights coincide with the grounds for their protection. The author substantiates the affirmative answer in connection with the correlation of new objects of civil transactions with the general provisions of civil law. The author formulates additional conditions for the implementation of the mechanism for the protection of the relevant digital right.

In the context of industry 4.0, technological progress is the main vector of industrial development. The state’s energy industry is rapidly progressing, primarily due to the formation of new-generation intelligent power grids based on advanced two-way communications between elements of electric networks, electric power plants, storage sources and consumers (Smart Grid). However, the new energy concept of energy transmission and distribution is associated with certain risks. Cybersecurity threats occupy a special place among the latter due to the increasing level of computerization and intellectualization of energy. Russia’s energy systems are increasingly being subjected to cyber attacks in the context of armed conflict and sanctions policy. In relation to the functioning of energy sector enterprises, critical information infrastructures are one of the key targets of cyber attacks. Since its launch, these attacks have been carried out by cyber-mercenaries (and their groups), who are attracted by various unfriendly and banned structures in Russia in order to destabilize the energy system of our state. Since the national security of the country depends on the functioning of critical information infrastructure facilities, the issues of timely suppression of such attacks are becoming relevant.

The paper examines the essence of state registration of rights to real property and transactions involving such property, analyzing its legal nature and significance as an act of securing the rights. The author emphasizes that state registration serves as an external indicator of rights, providing protection and stability to transactions regulated by civil law. Special attention is given to historical models of registration, namely, the German and French systems that demonstrate differing approaches. Contemporary Russian legislation combines elements of both systems, facilitating a flexible regulation of relationships in the real property sector. The author investigates key issues within the theoretical framework of state registration. They include the object of registration (whether it pertains to rights or transactions), the legal nature of registration (the principle of entry versus the principle of opposability), the potential for contesting entries within the registry (negative versus positive systems), the principle of public authenticity and its impact on the protection of bona fide purchasers, as well as the degree of transparency within the registry (the principle of publicity). A critical assessment of judicial practices reveals a tendency to overlook the principle of public authenticity, often imposing additional verification requirements on property purchasers regarding the rights of sellers. The paper proposes legislative amendments aimed at enhancing the protection of bona fide participants in transactions. In conclusion, the author asserts that state registration serves as a fundamental mechanism for reinforcing property rights, thereby ensuring a balance between the interests of owners and purchasers. The effectiveness of this system hinges on a clear definition of its legal nature and the consistent application of registration principles.