From the Wikipedia page [1]
The municipal divisions in Russia, called the municipal formations (Russian: муниципальные образования), are territorial divisions of the Russian Federation within which the state governance is augmented with local self-government independent of the state organs of governance within the law, to manage the matters of local character. [1]
In the course of the Russian municipal reform of 2004–2005, all federal subjects of Russia were to streamline the structures of the local self-government, which is guaranteed by the Constitution of Russia. The reform mandated that each federal subject was to have a unified structure of the municipal government bodies by January 1, 2005, and a law enforcing the reform provisions went into effect on January 1, 2006. According to the law, the units of the municipal division (called municipal formations) are as follows:[2]
- Municipal district (or municipal raion), a group of urban and rural settlements, often along with the inter-settlement territories. In practice, municipal districts are usually formed within the boundaries of existing administrative districts.
- Urban settlement, a city/town or an urban-type settlement, possibly together with adjacent rural and/or urban localities
- Rural settlement, one or several rural localities
- Urban okrug, an urban settlement not incorporated into a municipal district. In practice, urban okrugs are usually formed within the boundaries of existing cities of federal subject significance.
- Intra-city territory of a federal city, a part of a federal city's territory. Since 2006 this kind of municipal units exists only in 3 cities:
- Moscow, see ru:Список районов и муниципальных образований Москвы
- St.Petersburg, see ru:Административно-территориальное деление Санкт-Петербурга
- Sevastopol, see ru:Административно-территориальное деление города федерального значения Севастополя
Territories not included as a part of municipal formations are known as inter-settlement territories.
Since 2005, for statistical and tax purposes, all municipal formations are assigned codes according to the All-Russian Classifier of Territories of Municipal Formations (ru), abbreviated as ОКТМО.