Sustainable reduction of investment in the Russian economy, observed since 2013, has become one of the most discussed issues. The aim of this work is to examine the contribution of several structural shocks to the dynamics of investment in 2003–2016. We want to consider the relationship between investment, GDP, domestic loans to non-financial corporations, the interest rate on these loans, external debt of Russian companies and the nominal exchange rate within the framework of sign restricted SVAR. In this work, four shocks are explored: terms of trade shock, shock of foreign funding (access to global capital markets), monetary policy shock and fiscal policy shock (public investment expenditures). The main results are as follows. External shocks dominate the dynamics of the Russian investment, and this applies not only to the terms of trade shock, but also to the shock of foreign funding availability. The sharp decline in access to it after the introduction of sanctions against Russia in 2014 had great negative impact on investments. In addition, the model estimates the role of monetary policy in 2015 as negative-neutral (thus offering an argument in favor of its easing), but at the same time rather insignificant. On the basis of our results we conclude that operational measures of economic policy are unlikely to crucially change the situation for the better. Removal of economic sanctions against Russia could promote investment, but only in the short-term period. In the long run reforms aimed at ridding the economy of such a high dependence on external factors are necessary.