Abstract. The article examines the largest Russian corporations’ role in the exports of goods to the EU countries. The author examines the Eurostat data, concerning Russian exports to the EU within several industries and compares them with the data on the biggest Russian TNC’s exports to the EU countries. It is concluded that the largest companies’ share in the general Russian exports to the EU dominates in all strategic export-oriented industries: oil and gas exports, metallurgy and chemical industry. The lack of diversity and competition together with EU’s biased approach against big state-owned companies makes Russian exporters vulnerable to EU’s open and latent protectionism, which significantly hampers the mutual trade. Russian companies’ position is worsened by the fact that almost all of them follow the price competition strategy. Their product’s advantage is low price so antidumping measures widely used by the EU regulating institutions against Russian exporters are extremely painful and can hardly be avoided or compensated. It is concluded that dozen of the dominating companies are not able to promote Russian trade interests. On the opposite, they contribute to the growth of trade imbalances between the EU and Russia. The most possibly successful way to redirect this development is to involve into mutual trade more Russian small and medium enterprises operating in a wide range of industries. This would diminish the current mutual trade imbalances and release political tension on the European side. It would also create a great opportunity for the Russian economy to raise its efficiency. Some rights of Russian exporters became guaranteed after Russia’s accession to WTO, but structural measures to stimulate Russian SME’s exports to the EU are still needed. It is suggested that the Russian authorities should pay special attention to chemical industry and engineering as these industries’ production is being already exported from Russia to the EU, but the variety and quality of goods are still far from desired.