Economic sanctions against Russia form a completely new context for public and private efforts to cope with crisis trends in Russian economy. With limited access to global goods, capital, and technology markets, it can at best minimize costs of the crisis but not come back to the normal growth path. Strategies to find new trade partners and sources of capital outside the group of countries that have introduced economic sanctions against Russia are welcome, but their potential is rather limited. Under these circumstances, crisis management should be centered neither on the alleged ‘Russia’s pivot to the East’ nor on the wide-scale import substitution but on normalization of economic relations with key country partners, regaining currency stability, and structural reforms aimed at moving national economy away from commodity specialization.