Natural resources. Oil & LNG (which America exports but much of Europe, China, and India import). They have Uranium fit for nuclear plants (so does Mali, which is why it’s a point of contention between France and Russia). Kind of crappy but still explosive weapons sales. The U.S., France, and China will sell you previous generation weapons that are better than Russia’s best stuff.
I mean, to vastly oversimplify, it’s a gas station with nuclear weapons and rocket scientists from the Soviet era. It’s not a diversified economy for a country so large. They export grain and shit like that but it’s a whole continent wide and they aren’t efficient about it.
To me, Russia fell into the “natural resources trap” where a country can sell oil, gold, diamonds, whatever and the citizens are fine with low taxes and jobs but it ultimately can doom you to misrule. A country that doesn’t have oil or whatever has to do things the hard way. Like educate everyone and be a knowledge economy. That’s harder than finding oil.
Sochi seems lovely and I’d like to visit St Petersburg once relations normalize but no one associates Russia with tourism like they do Italy or France or Thailand or Bali or wherever your nearest tourism hotspot is.
So, long term, I’d like to see Russia embrace its strengths outside of energy and arms. We’d all be happier. But I’m not in charge so we’ll see what Trump and Putin do instead.