The “unfriendly action” of Finland was to join NATO, a direct response to Putin’s bloody invasion of independent and sovereign Ukraine. Sweden will also soon formally join NATO.
Thus Putin’s mad invasion & disastrous attempt to destroy the very existence of a separate Ukrainian nation (it’s just an “ungrateful” part of “Greater Russia” you see) has boomeranged and expanded NATO borders with Russia by many hundreds of miles. To prove he “is not bothered much” by this development Putin is now moving thousands of border troops away from the Finnish border and sending them to Ukraine — even though the now NATO/Finnish border is extremely close to Russia’s precious port and 2nd biggest city, Saint Petersburg.
This shows that the Russian argument that the mere possibility of Ukraine one day joining NATO was provocative and threatening to it was always a false argument. Putin knows his Ukraine invasion was never about NATO threatening Russian sovereignty, but about the people of Ukraine setting an example that they much prefer to be a part of Europe — this was intolerable.
The problem is Russia’s intense chauvinist & imperial attitudes toward Ukraine, the reality of Russia’s poverty and decline, and the mad desire of Putin to re-take this once centrally important part of the USSR and Czarist Empire — all
this is what drove Putin crazy and was intolerable to the Russian regime’s self identity. “Rebuilding the Russian Empire” of course had to start with Ukraine.
I don’t usually agree with the Atlantic Council at all, but there is a lot worth considering in this article: