The gas has to go somewhere, but if the regular receiver (EU) doesn't want it or denies the seller the ability to charge for it (sanctions) then you can't just keep compressing and piping it somewhere else forever.
Doesn't seem to be a black and white situation given that the pipeline delivers gas at 20% its capacity. AFAIK it's Russia throttling on their end, is that not correct? Russia itself isn't even claiming it's payment related. Do you have different information?
Honestly I don't know what to believe for real because I can see both sides just playing word games. It could either be Germany ("the west") trying to make Putin look extra bad - also see the wording of "oh baaad ecological disaster burning all that gas" while they intended to mainly just burn it as well in winter, though of course burning it for staying warm is morally less bad than just burning it off, if you ask me - while looking for other sources of Gas anyway. On the other hand it is absolutely believable that Putin is inventing reasons that seem reasonable to the casual observer to stick it to the west, who are arming Ukraine - which he obviously doesn't like. Whether or not one agrees with one side or the other on whether it's a "special military operation" or an "attack" is irrelevant for that I believe.
There are no technical reasons for the throttling, yet this is what the Russians claim.