I believe that Russia has been involved in this for quite some time. There was a period when they had an excess of natural gas and weren’t selling it to Europe. So, what were they doing with all that gas? Recently, news came out that Russia is "allowing" Bitcoin mining and permitting some companies to make settlements in Bitcoin. I'm not a fan of Putin, but he is undoubtedly one of the most intelligent politicians we have today. It seems like he's been invested in this for a while now. I remember that during the pandemic, the Russians were already making payments in BTC.