Aug 24 (Reuters) - The Russian rouble steadied on Thursday as a favourable month-end tax period approached, but domestic uncertainty was high following the possible death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, in a plane crash.
Russia's most powerful mercenary, Prigozhin was on board a plane which crashed on Wednesday evening north of Moscow with no survivors, Russian authorities said, two months to the day after he led an abortive mutiny against the army top brass.
At 0733 GMT, the rouble was unchanged against the dollar at 94.27 and had gained 0.1% to trade at 102.39 versus the euro. It had shed 0.2% against the yuan to 12.93.
The rouble strengthened sharply last week after hitting a near 17-month low of 101.75 to the dollar, as the central bank hiked its key rate by 350 basis points to 12% and exporters increased selling of their foreign currency revenue following discussions with Russian authorities.
As the end of the month approaches, the rouble should gain the support of tax payments, where exporters usually convert foreign currency revenues into roubles to meet local liabilities. Though, some analysts said exporters may already have enough FX.
"In recent days, trading turnover has been falling, which could be evidence that exporters have enough foreign currency to pay taxes to the budget and that they have again started holding on to foreign currency revenues," said Alexey Antonov of Alor Broker.
Brent crude oil, a global benchmark for Russia's main export, was down 0.5% at $82.77 a barrel.
Russian stock indexes were lower.
The dollar-denominated RTS index was down 1.2% to 1,038.3 points. The rouble-based MOEX Russian index was 1.2% lower at 3,110.6 points.
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For Russian treasury bonds see (Reporting by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Kim Coghill)
