[csomar]

What you got wrong is putting all the blame on Putin. The US has made it clear that it is not accepting that Europe gets its gas from Russia regardless whether Putin is friendly, not in power, or Russia is a democracy. Not everyone agrees with the US stance (Germany went with the pipeline, France/Macron tried to avert the war). It seems that US intelligence has prevailed, however, to the advantage of the US (or their plans at least).

Europe got badly screwed. Now Putin is an enemy forever. And he is not going down since all of Russia's powerful people are on a watch list. They have nowhere to go, and so they might as well stick around to the bitter end.