Digitalization of Russian land law: Problems and prospects

The digitalization of land relations in Russia now affects not only the form of administrative procedures, but also the legal identification of land plots, the confirmation of rights and restrictions, real estate transactions, and land control. Its legal regulation, however, remains fragmented. This study sets out to ascertain the current state and principal directions of the digitalization of Russian land law, identify the legal benefits and risks, and substantiate priorities for further legal regulation. The studied regulatory material comprises the Land Code of the Russian Federation, as well as federal laws governing state registration of real estate, cadastral activities, electronic signatures, information, spatial data, and cadastral valuation, together with the relevant subordinate legislation. The study relies on formal legal, systemic, and comparative legal methods, as well as analysis and synthesis of regulatory and doctrinal materials. The findings show that the digitalization of land law is developing in six principal areas: (1) electronic registration and registry technologies; (2) remote sensing and unmanned aerial vehicles; (3) electronic land auctions; (4) artificial intelligence; (5) 3D-modeling of real estate; (6) distributed ledgers and smart contracts. Current regulation enables basic digital procedures but does not ensure sufficient legal certainty concerning data quality and provenance, the evidentiary value of remote-monitoring results, the transparency of AI analytics, and protection against digital inequality. The main priorities consist in improving the data quality of the Unified State Register of Real Estate and the National Spatial Data System, creating machine-readable lists of restrictions and encumbrances, standardizing registry integration, using AI as an auxiliary tool for preliminary verification, and developing a 3D cadaster. While blockchain may prove useful in local operations, it does not appear as an immediate priority. The study concludes that the digitalization of Russian land law has moved from isolated experiments to institutional consolidation. Its main legal drawback is not the lack of electronic services, but the weak relationship between spatial data and the various rights and restrictions pertaining to land use. Therefore, legal regulation should be focused on the reliability and traceability of data, the preservation of procedural guarantees, and the mandatory legal assessment of automated solutions.

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