The Russia would have more problems invading those countries since its terrain ranges from mostly hilly to marshes. Let’s not forget the fact that almost every able-bodied Finnish man has military training, the same can be said for Sweden.
Couple that training with the reality of a nation fighting to repel an invader motivation.
This has been true for Russia repeatedly when they have been invaded.
It’s being demonstrated again in Ukraine.
NATO is a defensive treaty. It needs to act and respond as a defensive alliance and drive that point home in the media.
“Hey we were just standing here folks”
Russia tries to paint it as an expansionist alliance encroaching on Russia malevolently.
It has been a growing alliance of “voluntary” nations seeking to join for mutual defense. Not a single bad actor nation gobbling up Eastern European nations and territories.
Russia has done a very good job in recent years trying to frame nato as a US puppet bent on gobbling up all of Europe.
The recent forceful response and policy statements from many old Warsaw satellite states has shown this to not be true.
It’s hard to be an territory hungry monolith/puppet when anyone who has been watching nato relations the last 15 years knows damn well it’s been a room full of squabbling hens clucking about each other and who was and who wasn’t contributing their fair share. The common dialogue from parts of the larger nato nations has been what are we doing why are we even still in nato.
Thankfully when the feces started flying most have remembered this idea of a defensive alliance and responded and acted about as well as any international cooperative groups can be hoped for.
