There was not a fair presidential election in Russia since (arguably) 1996

Imagine pretending that the 90s elections in Russia were ‘fair’ when NATO literally intervened in them on the side of Yeltsin.

EDIT: grammar. I seem to have mixed up both ‘intervened in’ and ‘interfered with’ when I initially made the comment.

NATO has had weapons on the Russian border for 20 years now

Is that why we’ve seen so many NATO bases in Ukraine clash with the Russian military in the past 2 years? Oh, wait.

There were obviously no plans to “openly attack Russia”

Lol. You are saying this about the empire which, among other things, invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria just this century, and which has been committing a highly-televised genocide in Palestine.
Oh, and which also had the Russian government be its puppet in the 90s, and where it killed millions of people through legislative means.

Notably, you did not answer my question:
mind telling us how you think Russia should have reacted to the NATO-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014?

Having read some more of what you wrote, I do have to give it to you that you aren’t a chauvinist while also recognising that NATO is at least somewhat bad. However, my criticism of your position stands.

Perhaps a good start would be exercising its immense soft power inside the country to help pro-Russian powers (which has been attempted, but extremely unsuccessfully).

So you acknowledge that they already did it and it wasn’t enough . . .

TBH I agree with you that the invasion wasn’t justified. Nor was NATO expansion, orchestrating the 2014 coup in Ukraine, and a whole host of other things. (Disclaimer: I’m an anarchist, so I never see the actions of nation-states as legitimate or justified.)

But that actually doesn’t matter. At all. The important thing is to consider what to do now. War is fucking bad. People are dying. The environment is being ripped to shreds, both locally and globally. Capitalists are lapping up profits like nobody’s business. Far more important than where some shitty, illegitimate national border winds up ultimately landing is whether the participants in this war keep slaughtering working-class people for their own ends. The most responsibility for that lies with the U.S. and its empire, which is using Ukraine to try to harm Russia, no matter how many lives it has to toss into the meat grinder. It has directly intervened in peace talks and sabotaged overridden ceasefire agreements, and may very well do so again. Of lesser but still high responsibility is Ukraine’s government, which was U.S.-installed and has been selling itself, its land (massive privatization to the benefit of U.S. corporations), and its people (conscription, etc.) for the sake of a more privileged position within the empire. And of course Russia shares a lot of responsibility, though getting it to back away from that is hardest because nation-states have very little incentive to resign themselves to existential threats like NATO expansion/encirclement.

So what can you and I do about it? We can pressure the participants. You said in another comment that you live in (or your “home country is”?) Russia. You are in a position to actually pressure Russia to stop invading/expanding and to back away as much as you can possibly make it. You should. Good for you. Many people here are in a better position to pressure the West to do similar: to allow ceasefire negotiations to continue, stop the supply of weapons for war, shrink or dissolve NATO, keep their nation’s hands off of Ukraine, etc. We should. Working-class people “on both sides” pressuring the entities they have some small amount of influence on to back down isn’t contradictory, but is 100% consistent with socialists fighting the class war. Don’t forget that the class war is the only justified “war” there is or can be. As Vijay Prashad has said so well, “War itself is a crime.”

since you’re such a smart guy who knows what’s obviously made up, tell me about Operation Aerodynamic