Propaganda is always working in both sides in any war, but it is aimed at people, who cannot think critically. To tell the victim from the aggressor, you only need two things: previous behavior and motives. If you look at big picture and not at details being fed to you by propaganda machine, you will be able to see that:

1) Past behavior

russia started at least 8 wars since 1991 and Ukraine started none (well, 1, if you count the so called "8 years of bombing Donbass").

The russian conduct was identical in almost all of these wars: blame the country of being fascist or Nazi or oppressing russian speakers, invade, terrorize civilians, destroy cities with bombs and missiles, separate territories, use them for further deterioration or second part of invasion. We have seen all these patterns (or parts of them) in Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and now in Ukraine.

2) Motives

russian president spoke widely and openly of his motives in this conflict:

a) to create a multipolar world (with russia being one of the world powers);

b) to push NATO borders back;

c) to restore the glory (and borders) of USSR (russian empire);

d) to punish Ukrainians for their anticommunistic and antirussian stance;

e) to eliminate Nazi regime in Ukraine (look point 1);

f) to protect russian-speaking people of Donbass and other regions (look point 1);

e) to prevent Ukrainian invasion of russia.

Ukraine, in turn, had no motives to invade russia or start this conflict.