MOSCOW, Aug 17 (Reuters) - The Moscow Exchange will launch trading of the 19 most liquid shares from the U.S. S&P 500 index on Aug. 24, the bourse said on Monday.

The exchange had earlier planned to offer trading in U.S. blue chips from Aug. 17, in a breakthrough for a long-awaited project which was slowed by Western sanctions.

The exchange will offer shares in Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc, NVIDIA Corp, McDonald's Corp , Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc, Alphabet Inc , Exxon Mobil Corp, Boeing Co, Intel Corp, AT&T Inc, Pfizer Inc, Visa Inc , Netflix Inc, Micron Technology Inc, Activision Blizzard Inc, Walt Disney Co, Advance Micro Devices Inc and Mastercard Inc.

The Moscow Exchange will also start trading Apple Inc shares on Sept. 7.

Russia's largest bourse has said it will add more names from the S&P 500 later this year, planning to trade the stocks in Russian roubles. (Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh and Elena Fabrichnaya; Editing by Mark Potter)