Putin spoke about the "threat of NATO expansion". It happened. Why is Finland not Ukraine for the Kremlin?

As might be expected, NATO's real, not virtual, expansion has not led to any tangible reaction from the Kremlin.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made threatening statements and recalled the decision to place tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus, but that decision has no practical connection with Finland's entry into NATO. And the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitro Peskov, although he emphasized the "negative consequences" of Finland's entry into the alliance, immediately emphasized that this situation cannot be compared with Ukraine's entry into NATO, because no one from Finland was "anti-Russian".
This statement by Kremlin officials already exposes Russian claims that link the attack on Ukraine with its possible entry into NATO. When Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022, this entry was not as realistic as the accession of Finland. However, Russian troops tried to probity to Kiev, not Helsinki.
The possible admission of Ukraine to NATO in Moscow has long been an excuse for aggressive intentions towards the neighboring country. And yet, let's recall, when Crimea was annexed in 2014, Ukraine was officially a non-aligned country, the majority of its citizens were against joining NATO, and there was not an American, but a Russian military base in Crimea itself - and its status was determined not only bilateral agreements, but also transitional provisions of the Ukrainian Constitution.
However, when the annexation took place, Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders spoke precisely about the danger of NATO approaching Russian borders. And when NATO got really close - they didn't lift a finger!

So how does Finland really differ from Ukraine from the Kremlin's point of view? First of all, the fact that Finland is a country whose sovereignty is not disputed. It wasn't always like that. In 1939, Stalin actually decided to annex Finland. The puppet government of the "Democratic Republic of Finland" was formed on the territory of the country occupied during the first battles of the "Winter War". But the Soviet Union never managed to win, and during the Second World War Finland's sovereignty was guaranteed by the joint decisions of the Allies regarding the anti-Hitler coalition. Therefore, from Putin's point of view, it seems that Finland is a "cut off piece", and its entry into NATO only confirms this fact.
But with Ukraine, as with any other former Soviet republic, it is different. The Kremlin has never come to terms with the fact of their sovereignty; Moscow has repeatedly stated publicly that "historical Russia" includes Ukrainian lands.
So, it is not a problem at all that Ukraine needs to join NATO. The fact is that Putin would probably like to annex the territory of Ukraine, and possibly other former republics of the USSR, to the Russian Federation. And joining NATO will, of course, prevent that, because it will turn the conquest of neighboring countries into a real global conflict.
That is why the proposals on security guarantees for Russia, which were published on the eve of the Russian attack on Ukraine, were not only about guarantees for the non-expansion of NATO, but, above all, about guarantees that Ukraine, Georgia and other former Soviet republics would not be accepted into ON THAT.
After Russia predictably received a negative response to these demands, which would clearly violate the sovereignty of both NATO countries and the former Soviet republics, it started the war.