Foreign trade relations of the Russian Federation: trends in the sanctions period and the results of 2016

The article analyzes changes in the dynamics and the geographic structure of foreign trade relations of the Russian Federation, which appeared recently, especially after the entering of the anti-Russian sanctions and response countermeasures. Significant complications in cross-country commodity exchange of Russia with its main partners, historically old and traditional ones, in the European Union were noted against a background of unfavorable external economic conditions. Their deterioration largely caused not too positive dynamics of world trade in goods, the value of which in the years after the global financial and economic crisis has showed a sluggish growth rate (2011-2013), and stagnation (in 2014), and then the absolute fall (2015). Moreover, preliminary estimates of the results of 2016 do not give grounds for optimistic conclusions. As ineffectiveness and, respectively, hopelessness of the western sanctions, imposed against Russia, became quite obvious to many, it would be represented timely and reasonable to pass to a new stage in the foreign trade relations of the Russian Federation and Western countries to return to the development of mutually beneficial cooperation in the sphere of commodity exchange. This is evidenced by the data given in the article as the author actively used methods of the comparative and statistical analysis.