Nowhere do you provide any evidence that Putin blew up his own pipeline. That Putin is a brutal thug is (IMO) not up for dispute. He's enriching himself and his family though the wealth of his country. Putin is a dictator of a resource rich country just like the Saud Family, the Sultan of Brunei, the Emir of Kuwait, the Sultan of Oman, Gadhafi or Saddam Hussein.

Oh wait, those last two we used to get along with, until they stopped doing the US bidding. Then we declared they were state sponsors of terror, invaded their countries and killed them. Just like we've been trying to do to Assad for the last 10 years.

In 2008 Putin said the Eastward expansion of NATO had to stop. That's when we went from being frenemies with Putin to straight up enemies. No one in the US gov't gave a shit about Putin maybe false flagging his own people. Putin went fishing with Bush AFTER that.

So back to the start. You have provided no evidence that Putin blew up his own pipeline. That'd be like claiming a Mafia boss blew up his own casino. It doesn't happen.

Putin had virtually nothing to gain from blowing up NS, and hundreds of billions to lose. The opposite was true for the US, plus the fact that since at least 2014 (Condoleezza Rice) the US has been talking ever more openly about stopping NS.