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At 5.15 a.m. , the rouble was around 0.7 percent
weaker against the dollar at 58.76 rubles per dollar and 0.4
percent weaker against the euro at 71.31 .
Within the first hour of trading, the rouble had surged to trade
as much as 6 percent higher against the U.S. currency, before
gradually sliding back.
A forex trader at a Russian bank said the central bank was
unlikely to have intervened on Tuesday, citing the small volumes
that were moving the market.
"Our market is very thin ahead of the New Year's holidays. With
just $700 million in tomorrow trades, the rouble had moved by
over 5 percent," the trader said.
Analysts said the early surge was probably driven by forex sales
by one of Russia's state exporters, which were recently ordered
to sell part of their overseas revenues to support the rouble.
A Finance Ministry official was unable to immediately say
whether the ministry had sold foreign currency left over on its
accounts on Tuesday.
The Russian currency is down more than 40 percent against the
dollar this year, hurt by plunging oil prices and Western
sanctions imposed over Moscow's role in Ukraine's crisis. They
have limited Russian firms' ability to borrow abroad and spurred
demand for dollars.
That slide has prompted heavy central bank interventions of more
than $80 billion to defend the rouble and threatened to shatter
the economic prosperity on which President Vladimir Putin's
popularity partly rests.
The central bank said on Tuesday that the Finance Ministry had
sold $80 million in forex market interventions on Dec. 26, part
of co-ordinated government efforts to defend the rouble.
The central bank releases its interventions data with a time lag
and said it did not intervene itself on Dec. 26.
Front-month Brent crude oil slumped on Tuesday to a new
five-and-a-half year low on Tuesday at below $57 a barrel.
(Editing by Catherine Evans)
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