Russian central bank decides not to reopen stock market trading next week

Russia's central bank on Saturday said it has decided not to reopen stock market trading on the Moscow Exchange from March 14-18, with the exception of some non-open-market transactions an transactions using the SPFI payment system.

It said the foreign exchange market, money market and repo market would open at 0700 GMT on those days. The bank said it would announce the operating mode for the following week at a later date.

The news comes as Russian forces appear to have made progress from north-east Ukraine in their slow fight to reach the capital Kyiv, while tanks and artillery pounded places already under siege with shelling so heavy it prevented residents of one city from burying the growing number of dead.

In Mariupol, unceasing barrages have thwarted repeated attempts to bring in food and water and to evacuate trapped civilians.

The city’s death toll has passed 1,500 in 12 days of attack, the mayor’s office said, and a strike on a maternity hospital in the city of 446,000 this week killed three people.

Continued shelling forced crews to stop digging trenches for mass graves, so the “dead aren’t even being buried”, the mayor said.

Russian forces have hit more than a dozen hospitals since they invaded Ukraine on February 24, according to the World Health Organisation.