[kibwen]

> Furthermore, doing it in a way that takes the blame off the German government is beneficial to the German government.

No, the German government knows it needs to weather the winter, and have been relying (and continue to rely upon) Russian gas to fill their reserves. Their goal was to have their gas reserves filled to 95% capacity by November, and they appear to have been at around 75% before Russia started playing games with Nord Stream 1 last month. Of all the states most negatively impacted by this, Germany is probably #1 (yes, even more than Russia).