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in Germany alone there were several protest going on due to the problem they see from high tax, energy cost, unemployment and inflation.
In France, there are already anti NATO protest. The people are protesting to exit NATO and demanding to stop supplying arms to Ukraine.

if these two Germany and France will confront energy and economic crisis this coming winter, what more could the smaller countries in EU face?
All these problems began when the Ukraine-Russia war started. if you are in Olaf's position in the German government and caught in the middle, will you listen to the people or to NATO?

as of now, they are relying to Norway gas pipeline that only produces 5-7 Million cubic meter of gas while Nordstream can produce 170M cubic meter to Germany.  

Russia is an influential country with sizable influence and well as minorities in several European countries. So yeah, they can gather pro-Russian (anti-NATO) protests. I believe that what's important for democracies is to assess whether the protests reflect the opinion of the majority of the population (as they often don't and actually reflect the opinion of a loud minority). It's not hard to estimate that with sociological polls. Then, if the majority is indeed against remaining in NATO, I think there should be a bit of research on why (main reasons) and whether people understand the potential consequences of leaving. After that, of course, it's important to adhere to the will of the majority and withdraw if that's what they desire, perhaps via national referendum, given that the decision is big. As of 2021 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293783/nato-membership-support-levels/), the majority in all NATO states were in favour of remaining there, but in some countries there was also a significant opposition, so perhaps in a few countries the majority might oppose remaining in NATO now.

It started much sooner than what. When Europe became dependent on Russia for their energy needs, it was entirely foreseeable that something like this would happen. Wait till it gets colder outside and people have to battle a chilling winter with high energy costs. Green energy initiatives certainly don't seem to be having the greatest ROI.

Fire up the coal/nuclear energy plants in Europe. U.S. should have also been ramping up their energy production and flood the market with cheap energy, it would decrease Russia's leverage.

Sorry to break this news to you guys, but the German chancellor just turned down an offer for Gas from Putin. On those "protests" that you mention in Europe, I would very much like to see a video of anyone saying "we want Russian Oil and Gas" -  that is, any genuine protester.

Europe is in the process of unlinking from Russians supplies. Gas is gas if it comes from Russian, Oman, the US, Argelia, Norway,... it does not matter. How does Russia intend to get a supply of electronics and manufacturing equipment, even to re-build the army?

So many things are happening all over the world, even I'm England I saw protesters complaining about high rate of food price and other products coupled with the high tax that many employees find it difficult to coup with. Things are hard these days and only the rich can survive this era that we are in. Every part of the world is full or problems and everyone keeps complain which the government need to take a look at it before crime become the order of the day. I hope this will end soon since many EU countries had decided to accept any gas supply from Russia.

it could mean Olaf Scholz is helpless in this massive problem that Merkel seemed to have foreseen it coming?

coal is much destructive to what they were aiming with green energy. nuclear energy plant would have been better, they however also halted some operations of their nuclear power plant. instead of negotiate Saudis and Iran, US can actually produce since they are the largest producer. so its now up to Norway as the biggest supplier in EU.

these are just protest for now but the chilling winter will the the final word for the people to massively knock the doors of the government officials.

Did NATO member states underestimated the consequences of the support of Ukraine and sanctions on Russia?
The answer might be yes or no. Yes because is glaring that most European nations cannot manage the economic downturn caused by their decision to punish Russia. It is glaring that there is no plan on how to substitute the Russian gas supply and this has caused high power costs and unemployment. Also, the cost of arming Ukraine was also underestimated because currently, some NATO countries might not be able to afford to spend on Ukraine while they are borrowing to sustain their economies.  

The answer could also be that NATO nations a willing to go through any kind of pain to enable them to curtail the excesses of Russia. They are willing to pay any price to correct the mistake they made when they over-depended on Russian oil and gas. Hence, these governments are willing to endure the consequences of boycotting Russian supplies as they learn or devise ways of getting alternative suppliers. These NATO members believe that stopping Russia from its constant annexation of territories by arming Ukraine is a risk worth taking. But it seems this option is harming the populace and the suffering overshadowing the intentions of the government.  

The problems is laying more deeper than this war and sanctions against Russia. Everything started when Frau Merkel & co decided to suck Putin's gas pipe. Then everything looked ok, they were getting cheap gas from Russia. But Europe simply started to depend too much on Russian gas, as Russia were main supplier and they didn't looked for alternatives in case if something will happen. It's not understandable, considering that Russia never were allie of EU and NATO. Now it's already too late, Europe now is victim of their past actions and you can't fix this problem in few months. Winter will be difficult...
Russian propaganda already covering these protestslike already whole Europe is already asking to lift sanctions against Russia. But is it these protests is really massive and does it really reflect majority opinion? I don't think so.