The rise of $1.2 billion to $352.9 billion was "mainly under the influence of positive exchange rate and market revaluations", the bank said in an e-mailed statement.

strengthened by around 3 percent versus the dollar in the week to March 20, increasing the dollar value of assets the central bank holds in euros, which account for around 40 percent of the currency reserves. Other changes in the value of the bank's securities portfolio could also have affected the reserves figure. Russia's reserves are currently just above an almost eight-year low after taking a hammering in the second half of 2014, when the central bank stepped up its market interventions to defend the rouble . The bank has since stopped selling currency from its reserves to support the rouble. But it recently introduced repurchase operations to provide foreign-currency liquidity to Russian banks, which also acts as a drain on the reserves. (Reporting by Alexander Winning, Vladimir Abramov and Elena Fabrichnaya; editing by John Stonestreet)

The euro