I'm gonna explain this in the smallest words I can. They need the pipelines, so they can blackmail Germany.
Except Germany is already full up of reserves for the winter, and thus additional natgas from the pipelines would be 'nice to have', not 'difference between freezing and living this winter'.
Additional gas would also have been under the contracts that these blasts can now render 'void by act of God', thus saving Russia the penalty fees for violating said contracts.
And just today the Russians shutdown gas going to Europe via the remaining pipelines that go through Ukraine and Poland, which undercuts the 'they needed NS1/2 to hold Germany hostage' narrative.
And you think the United States is a rational actor?
More rational than Russia is, because unlike in Russia our troops can actually pass bad news up the chain, while Russian forces are structurally built so that people do not pass bad news up the chain for fear of getting blamed/made an example of.
Also, I should refer you back to them using Chernobyl as an armor corridor and giving conscripts pre-accident maps of the place that has resulted in them digging in some of the most radioactive soil on Earth, and undoing a lot of the work done to clean up the area after the reactor explosion, while now adding UXO's to the radiation hazards in the Exclusion Zone.
And this doesn't even touch the systemic corruption and graft that seems to be nearly at Afghani levels of 'ghost soldiers on teh payroll so officers can pocket more money' or how many of their equipment reserves turned out to have been stripped of choice bits by black marketers.
It's possible; but that too would be an assumption.
One backed up by the contractual issues with the pipelines Russia can now avoid, the Russians cutting off the other overland pipeline today, and how often the Russians have tried to pin their own fuckery on the West because they know the internal divisions bought on by the Left's behavior will give them top-cover for a bit.
Have you forgotten the 'US biolabs in Ukraine to make anti-Slav bioweapons' shit the Russians pushed in the initial days of the invasion?
Except as he himself is clearly illustrating, there's no way in heck Russia isn't going to be blamed for this; meaning they'll still be on the hook for any contractual violations, and only an idiot wouldn't have seen that coming.
This assumes that 'throwing doubt about who blew the pipeline to slow western response' wasn't also factored in, when it is something the Russians have attempted multiple times in the past regarding trying to pin the blame for their fuckery onto the West.
While the MSM and governments reported "leaks" in the pipelines following sudden pressure drops to zero, Swedish seismologists knew better.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
The timing of Russia cutting off the other pipelines today, the contractual issues they can now avoid, along with the fact that Germany already has all the gas it needs for this winter, do not seem to be considered in this article.