(Reuters] – Russia’s central bank stated Tuesday that the publication of information on debt external to Russia had been temporarily suspended.

In a message posted on its website, the regulator announced that “Bank of Russia suspends publication of quarterly information on the Russian Federation’s external debt repayment plan”.

The issue of foreign debt payments is a hot topic right now, as Russia has been hit hard by Western sanctions on its financial system.

In the first suspension of foreign trade data since 1997, the central banking temporarily stopped publishing monthly statistics on last week’s foreign trade.