Russia lost money, equipment and a lot of gas, but Russians will still have jobs, warm shelters and food. Germans won't have any of that.
So this was an audacious move by the US. They must have absolute confidence in their powers of persuasion, bolstered by the propaganda campaign of the last 6 months.
If you'll recall (recall if you can), Germany and the rest of the EU (except Hungary) put sanctions on Russian gas and oil.
That was Step One. Step Two was when Germans and other Europeans no longer had the gas and oil their governments had sanctioned.
That is a two step process, easy to follow, able to be understood by a 3 year old. Stop the gas, then the gas stops. Easy, peasy.
And yet......the Mighty Wurlitzer of propaganda has been playing the "Russia is weaponizing gas" narrative for the last 6 months, telling the population that it was Russia who stopped the gas.
They do monitor our reactions via the internet, you know. Therefore it must be that they are satisfied that enough people fell for that narrative, unable to remember a simple two step process even when it literally just happened, to make them confident that they can tell hungry, cold, jobless Germans "Russia did it" and have them believe it.
We will see. I am hoping that Germans, who have the reputation of being intelligent, will not fall for it, both for them and for us.
Because if they get away with it in Germany you can confidently bet that they will do it here next.