Legal Gaps in Russian Agricultural Sustainability Legislation: A Comparative Analysis Against EU and Chinese Regulatory Practice

Background. Questions about the regulatory preconditions for greening national agricultural sectors have grown sharper across post-socialist economies, including the Visegrad region, where EU accession created pressure to align domestic legislation with Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) conditionality requirements. Russia, outside the EU framework, faces structurally similar challenges through its own commitments under the Paris Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and SDG targets 2, 12, 13, and 15 – yet without the external compliance lever of EU membership. Objective. To identify and systematise legal gaps, collisions, and structural imbalances in Russian agricultural and environmental legislation that impede sustainable development of the agro-industrial complex (AIC), and to formulate concrete amendment proposals drawing on EU and Chinese comparative experience. Methods. Systematic analysis of 25 regulatory acts (NLAs) using a three-method design: (1) formal-legal analysis (internal, vertical, and horizontal consistency review); (2) comparative legal analysis benchmarking Russian NLAs against China‘s rural revitalization legislative package (2021–2026) and EU CAP 2023–2027 conditionality; (3) content analysis with systematic coding using operationalised criteria for a ‘gap,‘ ‘collision,‘ and ‘imbalance.‘ NLAs were selected on three criteria: direct regulation of agricultural activity; sustainability-related provisions; normative relevance to SDGs 2, 12, 13, 15. Results. 73 legal constraints were identified across nine thematic blocks. Critical findings include: absence of environmental conditionality (‘green screening‘) in the state support system; lack of legal status for soil carbon sequestration; contradictions between land, environmental, and agricultural legislation; barriers to circular economy and cooperative models; no statutory priority for biological plant protection. China‘s experience – the Rural Revitalization Promotion Law (2021), the Agriculture Green Development Plan (2021–2025), and the Emission Reduction and Carbon Sequestration Plan (2022) – offers directly applicable precedents. Specific amendments are proposed for 10 federal laws, 4 presidential decrees, and 7 government resolutions. Conclusions. Without addressing identified legislative gaps, Russia‘s AIC cannot achieve its declared green transformation targets. The proposed ‘green screening‘ mechanism, legislative recognition of soil carbon, and differentiated subsidy rates by environmental performance are consistent with approaches proven effective in both V4 countries (through CAP eco-schemes) and China, offering a convergent reform pathway.