Twenty-five years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union (USSR) which led to the disruption of the regional check-and-balance system aimed at resolving national issues and political and socioeconomic contradictions. It also resulted in a number of armed conflicts, including those in the Chechen Republic,

This article reports on research based on three crucial aspects of the current global economic situation. First is the role of transnational corporations (TNCs)

Two main issues are considered in this article. The first is the changing historical and legal status of private military companies (PMCs). Emerging after the end of World War II, the PMC phenomenon became wellestablished by the mid-1990s. In the first decade of the 21st century, PMCs not only engaged in military activity in different regions of the world but also participated as independent economic actors capable of occupying a certain niche in the military segment of the world economy. Following this review, the article examines the practical activities of PMCs drawing on the example of the conflict in Ukraine during the civil war that began there after the coup d'etat of February 2014 and which saw the removal of the legally elected president V. Yanukovych and the rise of nationalist radicals to power. It should be noted that the Ukrainian crisis is only one of many examples of the use of PMCs. Moreover, as demonstrated in this study, the most powerful PMCs in the world are represented in the territory of Ukraine, pointing to the extreme importance of the processes occurring in Ukraine from the view point of the interests of the dominant actors in the modern international system involved in Ukrainian affairs.

The article describes the integration processes that developed in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in the 2000s, which culminated in the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The purpose of the article is to determine the main directions of the EAEU development through the prism of country preferences of the participants of this integration association: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. The specifics of the involvement of these countries in the Eurasian integration processes in the CIS help to understand better the scale of the EAEU’s activities, its specifics, which is important for determining both the prospects for the development of the EAEU and the country dimension of Eurasian integration. The formation of the EAEU was preceded by the formation of the Customs Union (CU) and the Common Economic Space (CES), which generally corresponded to the algorithm that was present in world practice when creating large integration associations. The locomotives of the Eurasian integration process were initially Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, which demonstrated the highest level of economic and political interaction in the CIS. In conclusion, the main prospects for the country development of the EAEU and Eurasian integration in general are shown. The EAEU promises certain benefits to the states that are part of such an association. In addition, there is a certain political context here – as a result of closer integration, the EAEU states will become less susceptible to crises and the emergence of conflict situations. Like any integration association, the EAEU faces many problems and challenges, both external and internal. It is not always possible to overcome them completely, but the countries-members of the Union are making significant efforts to this, which in the future should give positive results in strengthening this integration project in Eurasia.