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To your point, the opposite was true historically and the US played a strong role that worked to sabotage good relations between Europe and Russia.
For a long time the US accused Russia of weaponizing its energy sales to Western Europe as a means to conduct war against their neighbors and also Ukraine specifically. And that’s true if you rely on omitted facts, distortions of real events and outright fabrications. This reality of this account though is actually a much more easy one to unravel.
The standard accusation against Russia for a long time was they weaponize and leverage the flows and sales of natural gas to exercise political primacy over Western Europe. This actually isn't a new line. It's one that's existed ever since the the Cold War. But to really understand where this comes in and how it all fits together, you have to go back to the 1960's. One of the things US Cold War policymakers found out was that any conflict that had the potential to involve nuclear weapons against the Soviets then would likely take place in Europe, rather than the US mainland. So the US feared the potential possibility that at some point in the future, European public opinion would turn against their battlefield designs for the region, and they were fearful that closer ties between Europe and Russia would negatively impact US strategy. Because of that the US has, all the way up until today, aggressively sought to avoid 'any' reconciliation or peaceable relationship between Europe and Russia; and that's where you see the US accusation of Russia seeking to divide the west card always getting played. It's basic geopolitical self-interest and hypocrisy at work. Accuse the other side of what you yourself are guilty of.
The US naturally tries at every turn to convince the public that Putin isn't a reliable actor. But that was always a false notion about Russia generally speaking, even going back to the Cold War; Russia very much respected it's contracts and arrangements and never tried to use them to politically sway their neighbors. Russia had consistently been supplying gas to Western Europe all the way back since 1960. There were turbulent times, but Russia always delivered on those arrangements. In 1982 Russia was making a pipeline between Siberia that stretched into Ukraine as a way to increase its supplies to Europe. When the oil crisis happened back in the 1970’s, Europe became worried about their energy supplies and deepened their relationship with the Soviets to keep their supplies. That was as a result of the unpredictable nature of Arab politics. That increased the US worry that a greater dependence of Europe on Russia would have bad effects and alter the support against American policy in the region.
In the 1980's demonstrations and protests were actually increasing in Europe against the US deployment of the Pershing II missiles, and they were afraid that Europe's improvement of relations with Russia would stop that deployment from happening. So then Russia had to be presented as an unreliable supplier. So what we did was we sabotaged the pipeline under the Reagan’s presidency. Not a long of people know that. But that didn't stop Russia from ultimately completing the pipeline anyway. So in response, the US declared an embargo on Russian gas to force the Europeans to quit buying it. We said we'd compensate Europe for how they might be affected by it by increasing our coal supplies to them, but our production and shipping capacity wasn’t good enough to be able to keep up with demand. Eventually the embargo was forced to end and Russian gas deliveries to Europe resumed as normal.
So it's pretty reasonable to think that if there was some kind of armed conflict that happened at that time, then Russia would've cut it's hydrocarbon supplies. But during the entirety of the Cold War, they never did. The US on the other hand, fought tooth and nail in every way it could think of to prevent any strengthening of ties or good rapport between Europe and Russia. And that's where you see the hand of US foreign policy's "You're either with us or against us," mentality at work. And you don’t have to be a partisan to see this.
Now go back to Ukraine in 2014. After the crisis happened, the US imposed sanctions which stopped western companies from delivering ‘any’ hydrocarbon related equipment to Russia. The idea was that Russia was clearly dependent on western technology to continue their energy operations, so if we restrict the transfer of technology, that will stop their energy production. What happened in reality was that it stopped Exxon and Shell from cooperating with Russian energy companies. Because of the delay in production, Russia simply developed the technology domestically instead. And today in 2026, they no longer needs western technology. This is exactly the reason why the discussion of US policy began to shift to sanctioning US allies like Germany over Nord Stream 2. Because Germany simply sees the Europe-Russia trade as a commercial bridge between the two, the US seeks it as a division in the western camp of things. As it relates to Nord Stream 2 more generally. The US doesn't care one damn bit about European dependence on Russia. What it does care about is Europe fostering good relations with Russia, which the US is opposed to.
It isn't Russia that's an unreliable seller. It's the Europeans who are unreliable buyers. I think it's very likely that Russia will continue it's contractual obligations with Europe. But it'll be less willing to take on any new obligations. Because of the US meddling, pounding it's hands and stomping it's feet to terrorize Europe into following it's policies, it's making the European market less attractive to Russia and more attractive to Asia. This is where things really began to pivot to the strengthening of diplomatic relations between Putin and Xi, and that's where things stand at today. That's how we got where we are currently.
European dependence on Russian energy was an obvious vulnerability. The Soviets never cut off supplies during the Cold War since there was never a conflict as divisive as Ukraine is today, while when Russia invaded Ukraine it did weaponize energy flows. The US was right to oppose gas dependence and stuff like the Nordstream pipeline, in terms of both liberal idealism and simple power politics.
Most of what you've written here isn't wrong, but it's mixed with a lot of rhetoric implying the US is a uniquely evil, conniving nation that wanted to sabotage Good Guy Russia from living in peace and harmony with the rest of Europe.
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