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Russia is one of the leaders in outward FDI from emerging market economies and at the same time Russian MNCs have their specific features. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze characteristics of Russian MNCs by researching relationship between specificities of Russian economic and political model, on the one hand, and specific features of Russian MNCs, on the other hand.

For these researches, traditional instruments of neoclassical theory are basically used.

The principal finding is that specific characteristics of Russian MNCs reflect specificities of Russia’s economic and political model. To some extent, they correlate with characteristics of MNCs of other two leading emerging economies – China and India.

Russian MNCs operate in line with principal theories of FDI, that is, on the basis of their country and firms’ comparative advantages. However, they possess specific features: many of them are state-controlled MNCs; private MNCs are controlled by oligarchs; all of them have tight relations with offshores and offshore conduit countries. The comparison with China and India shows that some of these specific features are typical of Chinese and Indian MNCs to more or less extent.

The empirical part of the chapter analyzes scope, industrial and geographical profiles of Russian MNCs, their motivation and management, impact on Russian economy and regional integration.

National MNCs with their offshore affiliates are the leading tax evasion economic agents in Russia. Moreover, stable FDI outflow reduces gross capital formation in Russia which is insufficient (19–25% of GDP) for substantial economic growth by standards of emerging economies in this decade (from 4.3 to −3.8 in Russia, from 6.8 to 9.5 in China, from 5.1 to 7.3 in India).

The principal value (originality) of the chapter is its comparatively detailed review of main aspects of Russian MNCs’ worldwide activity made from the point of view of its connection to Russia’s economic and political model.

The focus of this paper is the emergence of Russia's multinational companies. It aims to analyse their motives to internationalise as well as the approaches to internationalisation. While relevance of the theoretical perspectives is highlighted, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the present‐day phenomenon of emerging Russian multinationals.

The paper relies on a qualitative approach for the analysis of the nature of Russian multinationals. The phenomenon of the emerging Russian multinationals is analysed through the prism and using insights from a number of subjects, namely transition studies, politics, innovation studies and international business studies.

The paper traces the evolution of Russian companies; the idiosyncratic path of their formation serves as a background for understanding of their internationalisation strategies. A special attention is devoted to the R&D activities of Russian multinational companies, and access to foreign technology is found to be an important driver of internationalisation.

The paper highlights relevance of further research on Russian multinationals and outlines research avenues.

The paper is rich in its practical implications. Specifically, it elaborates on the European Union‐Russian bilateral relations and the role of Russian multinationals in the European economies. The issue of political involvement is raised, and the paper seeks to identify whether Russian companies serve as tools of foreign policy, or they operate as business agents.

Despite their increasingly important role in the global economy, Russian companies have been largely overshadowed by the emergence of Indian and Chinese multinationals and not sufficiently addressed, even neglected, in the literature. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to fill in some gaps in the literature regarding this research area.