Currently, the chemistry of organofluorine compounds is a leading and rapidly developing area of organic chemistry. Fluorine present in a molecule largely determines its specific chemical and biological properties. This thematic issue covers the trends of organofluorine chemistry that have been actively developed in Russia the last 15 – 20 years. The review describes nucleophilic substitution and heterocyclization reactions involving fluorinated arenes and quinones and skeletal cationoid rearrangements in the polyfluoroarene series. The transformations involving CF3-substituted carbocations and radical cations are considered. Heterocyclization and oxidative addition reactions of trifluoroacetamide derivatives and transformations of the organic moiety in polyfluorinated organoboranes and borates with retention of the carbon – boron bond are discussed. Particular attention is devoted to catalytic olefination using freons as an efficient synthetic route to fluorinated compounds. The application of unsymmetrical fluorine-containing N-heterocyclic carbene ligands as catalysts for olefin metathesis is demonstrated. A variety of classes of organofluorine compounds are considered, in particular, polyfluorinated arenes and 1,2-diaminobenzenes, 1-halo-2-trifluoroacetylacetylenes, α-fluoronitro compounds, fluorinated heterocycles, 2-hydrazinylidene-1,3-dicarbonyl derivatives, imines and silanes. The potential practical applications of organofluorine compounds in fundamental organic chemistry, materials science and biomedicine are outlined. The bibliography includes 1019 references.

The synthesis of new fluorinated ruthenium(II) carbene second-generation precatalysts with unsymmetrical N-heterocyclic carbene ligands has been developed. The reaction profiles of these complexes have been studied in RCM with model substrates such as diethyl diallyl-and allylmethallyl-malonate, and CM model reaction of allylbenzene with 1,4diacetoxybut-2-ene. In olefin metathesis reactions, the new fluorinated second-generation Grubbs complexes exhibit comparable activity with respect to commercially available Grubbs catalysts. On the other hand, in RCM reactions, the Hoveyda-type catalysts present a latent character, which is not present in the classical second-generation Hoveyda catalyst.