The relevance of the investigating problem is caused by the need to reduce the total aggregated amount of debt in Russian economy in conditions of crisis and the strengthening of external anti-Russian sanctions. In this context, the purpose of this article is to identify measures aimed to regulate debt sustainability of the Russian economy using indicators characterizing the effectiveness of state regulation of internal and external debt. The leading method of research of this problem is a statistical analysis of the external debt that allows to consider this issue, as the process of changing the debt sustainability indicators, as well as the audit of total amount of debt in the economy. Results: it was concluded that the traditional financing expenditure of the federal budget commitment is reduced by structural changes of the state debt policy in conditions of decreasing dependence on exports of energy resources; showed a trend of relative decline of public external debt, while the growth of corporate; concluded that the possibility of optimizing the debt burden on the economy remain under-utilized; confirmed the feasibility of using the proposed indicators of debt sustainability. © 2016 Seleznev et al.