Finnish sovereignty isn’t a threat to Russian sovereignty. It’s only a threat to Russian sovereignty over Finland. The calculus does not change if you replace F

Finnish sovereignty isn’t a threat to Russian sovereignty. It’s only a threat to Russian sovereignty over Finland. The calculus does not change if you replace Finland with a former USSR territory—Ukrainian sovereignty doesn’t threaten Russian sovereignty, for example. Russia knows that NATO isn’t a real threat to Russian sovereignty and we know it knows because Russia demilitarized its NATO borders—NATO is only a threat to Russian imperialism, and Russia acting on its imperialist interests only persuades more countries to apply to NATO (thereby further degrading its imperial potential).