Territorial shifts in anthropogenic pressure on the environment in post-Soviet Russia

The changes in production and population in Russian regions for the years 1990–2020 are considered as an indirect indicator of the changes in the total anthropogenic pressure on the environment. It is shown that the pressure increases primarily in well-developed territories and decreases in vast underdeveloped areas. A new environmentally unfavorable trend in environmental pressures is the relative shift to coastal regions, i.e., to the vulnerable and recreationally attractive coasts of the Atlantic seas as well as the Caspian Sea. Simultaneously, there is a clear northeastern vector in the development of the mining industry, which leads to the formation of new local centers of large-scale impacts on ecologically significant and vulnerable landscapes of East Siberia, the Far East, the European North, and the shelf zones. In the 21st century, most of the main mining regions have increased their extraction of mineral resources: half of them by 50% or more and a quarter by 200% or more. It is shown that the environmental situation is more likely to deteriorate further in the regions with a strong increase in anthropogenic pressure than it is to improve in the regions that are now leaders in terms of reducing adverse impacts.