MOSCOW, Aug. 28 -- Percentages are generous to whoever picks the starting point.

Famil Sadygov, deputy chairman of Gazprom's management board, said on Friday that the company had seen positive trends in exports and that gas deliveries in the first half of 2026 rose by 8 percent. He did not say from what, to where, or at what price, and those are the three things that determine whether the number means anything.

Some of it can be filled in from Gazprom's own statements. Sadygov has said elsewhere that growth in supplies to China largely offsets the decline in exports to Europe, which is a precise and revealing formulation. It is not a claim of expansion. It is a claim of substitution, and substitution at a scale that is worth being exact...