This happens when you chew Russian propaganda all day and forget about the context, clearly stated in every article.
So Gazprom made a huuuuuge profit of close to $21 billion in 2021, and this was a surprise because?
The company, which reported a net profit of 1.456 trillion rubles ($23 billion) for 2018, has been going through an unprecedented management reshuffle.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gazprom-results-idUSKCN1S51DUSo despite record gas prices, it was a worse year than a year we didn't have covid, can you now use your magical armchair general mega economist prediction skills and explain how the profit sank even with those x15 prices? As for the 10 countries that have accepted to pay in rubles, I wonder if anybody can actually prove that, unless we're talking about Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, Chechnya, and so on. Maybe we would have to add even Bartovia to reach 10.
Now, if you would have just accepted that bet about Russia conquering Ukraine in a few weeks and if the world would spring the other way around you would have had a full bitcoin by now. But, as usual, only talk, no spine!
First of all, they do add those places, and many other smaller ones that have to around there, but that's basically just a situation that was expected, pro-Russian states and "nations" do exist. Secondly even though the profits are lower compared to 2018, and even 2019 I am guessing, they did better than 2021 or so I am guessing, this is not a guaranteed thing, I have no data, I am just guessing.
So, they used pandemic profits vs current profits calculations to show that they are doing better, which of course they would if that's true because we had pandemic. I am still not sure if it was better though, I have no information regarding pandemic period profits.