Thanks for posting this article. My guess is that Germany is getting charged .5%-1% by the Gazprom bank for this currency conversion. Whereas two months ago, Germany just sent Euros, so was not scraped by any Gazprom bank “surcharge”. When you are dealing in billions of Euros being paid out, this surcharge amounts to a huge amount of money. Germany resents these new Pooty Poot payment terms as a rip-off. Especially because Rooskies and Germany signed a contract that payment was to be in Euros. Then it was up to Russia/Gazprom, what to do with the Euros.
Now this currency conversion burden is shifted onto Germany and other European nations, to submit to losing more or less 1% via Bad Vlad’s new currency conversion rules. That were phoned in from Pooty Poot’s Führerbunker/ nuclear fallout shelter, carved out of the Ural Mountains.
An objective analysis, I suspect you are right.