We saw what the US did in Venezuela for simply cozying up to China, so I’m not sure what you expected Russia to do when it’s smaller neighbour is inviting its biggest adversaries to settle at its border.
Finland is a small country, and it joined NATO without Russia so much as flinching. Ukraine is nothing like small. It's bigger than France, for instance, with almost 50M people. Attacking it was just plain madness.
Yes, we are in agreement that empires bully their smaller neighbours. This is bad, right? You agree that this is bad... right?