I can see an even stronger motive for Putin to blow up Russia's own pipeline.....once the pipeline was blown up Russian had to find new markets for their products.....and these turned out to be mostly in China.
My guess is that this was Putin's plan all along....
Look at the way things have gone over the last year. After years of trading with Europe Russia has spun on a dime. In just the last year Russia and China signing treaties and the Russian economy is now being quickly integrated into the Chinese economy.
The problem with a dictatorship like Russia is that a few bad decisions by the dictator can screw up the whole country. Well....Putin has made a few bad decisions. His decision to invade Ukraine was stupid, the way he did it was stupider, and his military strategy of the last year has been stupidest of all.
Perhaps Putin also made a stupid decision to cut all ties with the west after the attack on Kiev failed. Putin seems to have decided to turn his back on the west and to lock Russia into an alliance with China instead. What better way to "burn his bridges" with the west than for Putin to blow up the Nordstream pipelines?
Once Putin blew up the pipeline Russia had no choice to but to embrace China in a new anti-western alliance....which is what Putin seems to want now.
Putin has broken economic and political ties with Europe and embraced China. What better way to force the people of Russia to follow his lead than to blow up the pipelines that linked Russia to Europe?Cheers!