The oil price hardly matters for Russian Country risk

• The Russian economy is encountering headwinds since the oil price declined and sanctions against the country were imposed. In this study we use correlation analysis to find out more about the relation between the oil price and country risk. • As expected we find a significant positive relationship between the oil price and the economic part of the country risk measure. But no such significant relationship is found for the political and structural parts of country risk. • The overall result is then that Russia’s overall country risk measure found not to be significantly correlated with the oil price.