They don't need to pay him. As he isn't lauding Russia but uses the incident to accuse the Biden administration it is just what he is doing anyway.
I want to tell you an anecdote.
I was almost always late when I was in junior high school.
Once I arrived late in the classroom as usual, and I saw that a mug full of pencils (which was on the teacher's desk) had fallen onto the ground and all the pencils were on the ground.
I saw that and I was shocked. At that moment the teacher entered the classroom, saw the mug and the pencil and said: "who did this?".
All of a sudden the bully of the classroom told the teacher that it was me. That I had dropped the mug.
In that moment I figured out who had done that.
So...in this case too... I know who did this.