Russian stock market knocked offline [updated]

| 11:45 pm EST February 27, 2022
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How quickly are things happening right now? Nearly all of the sanctions, asset forfeitures, and banking system lockouts that have been levied against Russia have taken place this past weekend, while the world’s stock markets were closed. When the Russian stock market opens in a couple hours, all of that devastating financial news will finally be reflected in the market. That is, if the market even opens.

For the past several hours, the official website for Russia’s Moscow Exchange – moex.com – has been offline. It wasn’t initially clear if international hackers took it down, or if the Kremlin itself perhaps took it down in a panic. But hacker groups have since taken credit for the move, and in fact moex.com is just one of a number of prominent Russian websites that are currently offline.

This comes amid the news that the Kremlin has made moves to try to block international traders from selling stock in Russian companies – a move which might backfire and set off even more of a plunge in value. Now, not only does Russia have to worry about the impending crash of its stock market within the next few hours, it has to worry about whether it even has control of its own stock market website. UPDATE, 12:48am: Russia has now announced that its stock market will remain closed for most of the day.