The crash in the Russian stock market after the country’s President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine wiped out roughly $259 billion in value.
Russian banks and oil companies were among the hardest hit in volatile trading.
The country’s largest lender, Sberbank, at one point lost 57%, while oil giant Rosneft plunged as much as 58%.
Gazprom, which is the energy giant behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was recently halted, was down 40%.
The Moscow Exchange, MOEX, Russia’s benchmark stock index, was down almost 30% in a day from its October peak on Thursday.
The index suffered its worst day since the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.
The dollar-denominated RTS Index, which has identical component stocks as MOEX, meanwhile, was down as much as 33%, the largest intraday drop in history near the open.
The MOEX announced on Thursday that it has suspended trading on all of its markets until further notice.
The country’s credit-default swap premium also soared above 750.
Stocks and the national currency pared some losses in early afternoon trading. The ruble was down 3.6% at 84.225 as of 12:59 p.m. (9:59 a.m. GMT) after diving as much as 9.4%. The country's central bank said it was intervening to "stabilize the situation."
The MOEX index later trimmed its loss to 25%.
