I am curious how Russian people feel about this propaganda line that they're fighting NATO. It's obviously nonsense, along the lines of "war is peace." Russia borders NATO and there is no front there. Russia invaded a non-NATO country and immediately bogged down against an army that does not fight according to NATO doctrine. I have to believe this is something the average Russian realizes.

Not Russian, but spent a lot of time out east.

Russia is reflexively anti-NATO as NATO is reflexively anti-Russia.

NATO is an alliance that was created in opposition to the Soviet Union. NATO has absorbed parts of the former Soviet Union.

Western companies pillaged Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Rightly or wrongly, Putin owes a lot of his original popularity to dealing with the aftermath.

Russia, rightly or wrongly, sees colour revolutions as intelligence operations, and territorial conquest.

Russia cannot accept NATO forces on its borders.

NATO is providing decisive material, political, logistical, financial and intelligence support to Ukraine, precisely to bog it down and drain it.

These are all pretty normal perspectives for most Russians. They're arguably pretty based, and not necessarily a product of internal propaganda campaigns.

The thing that westerners don't get about Russia, and the reason we're stuck in this Godforsaken conflict, is that we personalise things around Putin. We think that if Putin dies, everything will magically improve.

The decision to invade was Putin's, but the rationale goes much deeper and will outlast him.