[Dmitry Markov]

Seems you don't get me well - ok, I'll try to put it in another words - how the situation looks from my sofa:

We are in great need to finish the North Stream successfully - it's the most important project for the whole country as well as Force of Syberia. US and it's satellites in EU is doing it's best not to let us build last kilometers. They've already made the work of previous contractor impossible due to sanctions. With most hardest efforts Gazprom have found solutions to dodge this strike: it took almost a year to find legal solutions, to negotiate with Denmark and Germany, to find new contractor, to find new ships. And now almost everything is ready, US develops new sanctions one after another, but Germany and Merkel personally helps to withstand all that shots from US, but still perspectives for this all-important project are unsteady. And of course it's THE ONLY RIGHT moment to start another roughhouse around insignificant (in our real life, not in Western media) 3-rd rate media clown.
Quite a strange dichotomy: according to Western media our President is evil genius who has lesser resourses but always overplays because he is a) evil and b) because he is smart ( and maybe genius even). And now this evil genius makes absolutely stupid move in a situation when the stakes are very high and balance is very delicate....