The article provides a comprehensive assessment of the leading Russian economic journals and shows how their influence on the development of relevant subject areas is changing at the international and national levels. We conduct a multi-stage citation analysis for 2021–2013 and consider publications indexed in Web of Science and/or Scopus; thus, we describe the dynamics of average citation, assess journals’ ranking positions in the subject category, and determine the ratio of their citation to global averages. The information base of the study includes open data of the Master Journal List, SCImago Journal and Country Rank and Scopus. The results show that the citation rate of Russian economic journals relative to the global average remains low and tends to decrease in 2022–2023; the number of highly rated journals is decreasing against the background of an increase in the number of publications in the third and fourth quartiles. We reveal possible reasons for the decline in the visibility of Russian journals in the international space and propose ways to overcome the emerging negative trends. The findings are useful in designing approaches to the development of Russian scholarly periodicals in the changing international context.