I think Nordstream was the medium term plan. Did they put the cart before the horse a bit - yeah.
I don't think they ever expected the US or it's proxies to blow up the main energy line to Germany / EU. It was a work around from problematic Ukraine so I can see the win-win from that deal. Why they didn't see the fascists cooking under their nose idk. They misjudged their own so called friends. And they still won't call out the US for what they did - a deliberate act of eco terrorism, and now demanding they drain their coffers to blow up Ukraine to become complicit in a proxy war that isn't theirs.