The article provides an overview of the modern Arctic economy. It demonstrates that in the sectors of the economy that are associated with the development of natural resources (primarily mineral resources) and that emphasize return on investment, there is a growing role of new knowledge and technologies, and a significant increase in the role and importance of various forms of cooperation between the parties involved in regional projects. This approach helps solve the problem of attracting investment for high-risk, high-yield projects – however, the implementation of these ‘hybrid projects’ significantly limits the opportunities associated with the development of domestic scientific and production base. A direct consequence of applying this model to the development of natural resources in the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation is a noticeable growth of the technology-intensive service sector, which satisfies the demand for equipment and labor by adopting foreign cuttingedge technologies and relying on the inter-regional model of work rotation. All of this leads, among other things, to the fragmentation of the country’s economic space (to a reduction in the degree of interconnectivity between the economies of different regions), as well as to stagnation and eventual collapse of urban-type settlements in the Russian Arctic.