You're saying about 'US propaganda' and 'the leash', which pretty much explains clearly why your perspective is a bit distorted, but let me mention a couple of facts:
1. Cost of building the pipe on the sea bed, potential ecological issues and costs of maintenance are much higher than putting it on land. It was quite a lot of effort to do that.
2. Bypassing Ukraine and Poland decreases the political costs of Russian aggression towards these countries, of course it's a good thing from Russian or German perspective, but there's no doubt it increases the probability of military conflict in Eastern Europe. Obviously, as you mentioned, the fact that these countries can no longer influence the German-Russian natural gas transit is the biggest advantage for Russia.
3. It was Russia that seized a part of Ukrainian territory recently, not the other way around, and natural gas was always used as one of the means of Russian influence in the region. In that context saying that Poland and Ukraine are hostile towards Russia introduces a bit of distortion. Why shouldn't they be? Is it not enough reason? This is what will be worse because of that pipe.
4. It is going to increase western Europe dependency on Russian natural gas , if you increase supply that's what happens. Natural gas is the obvious choice to balance the renewables in the grid. Even some German politicians recently mentioned that it may tie German and Russian energy sectors too much.
5. It all plays nicely with German policy to phase out the Nuclear as they will in fact become a major natural gas hub in Europe. It is against the climate and may jeopardise efforts to slow down global warming. They want the same policy for whole European Union.
6. The fact that from Russian perspective there are clear geopolitical benefits doesn't mean that western european companies cannot make money on it. I don't think that potential to destabilize any region or benefit from global warming was ever concern to the oil and gas companies or investment banks. Of cour
7. The list of German and Austrian politicians that received personal benefits out of that project is quite long: https://euobserver.com/foreign/151123
If it was just an economic project, would that be necessary?
1. Cost of building the pipe on the sea bed, potential ecological issues and costs of maintenance are much higher than putting it on land. It was quite a lot of effort to do that.
2. Bypassing Ukraine and Poland decreases the political costs of Russian aggression towards these countries, of course it's a good thing from Russian or German perspective, but there's no doubt it increases the probability of military conflict in Eastern Europe. Obviously, as you mentioned, the fact that these countries can no longer influence the German-Russian natural gas transit is the biggest advantage for Russia.
3. It was Russia that seized a part of Ukrainian territory recently, not the other way around, and natural gas was always used as one of the means of Russian influence in the region. In that context saying that Poland and Ukraine are hostile towards Russia introduces a bit of distortion. Why shouldn't they be? Is it not enough reason? This is what will be worse because of that pipe.
4. It is going to increase western Europe dependency on Russian natural gas , if you increase supply that's what happens. Natural gas is the obvious choice to balance the renewables in the grid. Even some German politicians recently mentioned that it may tie German and Russian energy sectors too much.
5. It all plays nicely with German policy to phase out the Nuclear as they will in fact become a major natural gas hub in Europe. It is against the climate and may jeopardise efforts to slow down global warming. They want the same policy for whole European Union.
6. The fact that from Russian perspective there are clear geopolitical benefits doesn't mean that western european companies cannot make money on it. I don't think that potential to destabilize any region or benefit from global warming was ever concern to the oil and gas companies or investment banks. Of cour
7. The list of German and Austrian politicians that received personal benefits out of that project is quite long: https://euobserver.com/foreign/151123 If it was just an economic project, would that be necessary?