Almost all of Russia's foreign debt is held privately. Russia has something like 12% of it's sovereign debt denominated in other currencies, which is pretty enviable. I don't have the numbers but I can remember the important ones I heard in a CFR discussion earlier this week. $60bil in foreign currency debt comes due this year and another $100bil next year (kinda makes holding 1.5bil in gold seem unimportant). Russia is sitting on about $223billion in sovereign wealth holdings denominated in foreign currency, not all of which is liquid but mostly liquid enough to to be useful. Russian companies have something like $20bil more in foreign assets than they have in outstanding debt that will come due in the next two years. Oil will probably edge up to mid to high $70's low $80's in the next year or so (anyone's guess but these guys guess was probably better than mine). Firms will either have to divest external holdings to pay debt, beg Putin for bailouts or go under if there isn't some kind of big turnaround. The two sources of a quick turn around would be the lifting of sanctions 25% of the problem or oil having a big uptick. Because firms will be beholden to Putin for bail outs it probably means that they won't be a significant force of friction for him in the next few years. As long as oil stays low the boost to the rest of the world economy will more than make up for the knock on effect from a Russian depression. There will be a Russian depression. Some banks and other firms that are heavily invested in Russia will suffer, might need a domestic bail out of their own but it's probably not going to infect the rest of the financial system. Fuck if I know how true that all is but it was the basic stance of a few Russian financial experts. They also thought Putin could weather the storm and that it'd be rough time for the average Russian. They did think that Russian love for their ruler would be sorely tested.