https://youtu.be/vyUDT1_qusw?t=279
Also, MEP Radosław Sikorski was pretty clear on it, before his wife got mad at him.
The pipeline was no longer transporting gas, but it certainly hadn't been "abandoned". That would have been monumentally stupid, especially in the context described by TFA.
Who would profit the most from physically cutting out Europe from Russian gas?
Consider the USA. They now plan to sell LNG to Europe for 4x the price it's sold domestically. This was still going to happen, but since the pipeline has been severed, it is now a certainty that the deal will go forward.
That is, the possibility of Europe getting scared of the crisis and backtracking on its distancing from Russia is now null. Now it's either rely on the US overpriced LNG or starve and suffer the cold. Isn't that convenient?
Given the low consideration the US have of Europe behind the curtains (who doesn't remember Victoria Nuland's famous "Fuck the EU"?), doesn't that make it even more evident?
Ooh, ooh, I know, I know! Australia! Unless you were going for Qatar? I think Qatar is making the most buck right now by diverting its sales of LNG from Asia to Europe instead, but I don't have the exact statistics in front of me.
Although actually the best answer is probably Russia. The fact that the pipeline is no longer operational means that Russia no longer has to pay contract penalties for failing to deliver the gas it was contractually obligated to deliver. (Natural gas is usually delivered via long-term fixed-price contracts).