Russia doesn’t pay people for that sort of thing, especially not a person like Musk. Instead they extort. Possibly over rare materials.
Anyway I don’t think Russia was part of Musks takeover of twitter, that stemmed from Musks own arrogant stupidity, but they certainly did become one afterwards.
You are making the mistake of conflating game quality with profit. He did not lessen the profitability of the games, on the contrary, and that is what the board cares about, not the quality of games.