Recent practice clearly shows that the implementation of the Strategy of spatial development as the basis of the state regional policy faces significant difficulties. One of these problems, significantly reducing the effectiveness of regional development policy is the lack of methodological approaches to the implementation of this policy on a targeted basis, taking into account the specifics of different groups of the subjects of the Federation. The article, basing on the authors' methods of

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... lding a regional index of economic development and ranking of the subjects of the Russian Federation, undertakes an attempt to identify specific groups of regions of the country as the objects of the federal policy of regional development and the regulation of the spatial structure of the country's economy. The authors formulate and evaluate in dynamic the basic "economic development potentials" of the regions of Russia. On this basis the authors identify — as a whole and in the context of separate groups of regions — the main factors and patterns, which ensure the steady growth of the regional link of the Russian economy. Taking into account the revealed patterns, the paper defines the possibilities of targeted addressing of various institutes and instruments of the federal policy of regional development in relation to specific groups of regions in the course of their ranking according to the authors' methodology.