REGIONAL FUNCTIONING SPECIFICS OF THE UKRAINIAN ECONOMY INDUSTRIAL SECTOR IN CONDITIONS OF DEVELOPMENT INSTABILITY

The purpose of the article is to identify transformations in the Ukrainian economy's industrial sector based on a comprehensive assessment of activity (production, labor, investment, and innovation) and the functioning efficiency (profitability) of the named sector in the regional section. The results of the evaluations carried out using the author's method made it possible to tentatively distinguish four groups of regions in Ukraine according to the type of their industry: first group – traditionally industrial regions with a high level of the industrialization of the economy and product innovation, a significant (with a tendency to increase) share of the extractive industry, the second group – regions that possessed sufficient industrial potential and/or demonstrated its active growth. The regions of this group are characterized by a highly developed processing industry, in which food occupied the largest share; the third group – regions with a high level of industrial and labor activity, the industrial sector of which was dominated by electricity production; the fourth group – the economy of these regions belongs to the non-industrial type, where the activity and efficiency indicators of industrial enterprises are mostly low (or tend to decrease). It is possible to ascertain the presence of certain transformational trends in Ukrainian industry over the last 10 years, the essence of which was the formation of new industrial centers that are still small in terms of activity scale, but with larger (compared to traditional industrial regions) values and higher positive dynamics of individual production and labor indicators, as well as investment activity of industrial enterprises. Such "new industrial" centers arose mostly in the western and central regions. The full-scale war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine in 2022 sharply and strongly intensified these transformational processes. All regions of the 1st group, which were industrial leaders, lost a significant part of their industrial potential. This applies primarily to metallurgical industries, which need radical modernization and innovative technologies. There was an increase in the industrial potential of a part of the regions assigned to the 2nd group instead, as well as a part of the regions belonging to the 3rd group, as a result of the enterprises' relocation, in particular.