I think so. I think one could say that Russia could have held off on a military response and I don't have any strong feelings about that because there is a lot of specifics that I don't know. But NATO has been prepping up Ukraine to be its proxy in its goal to contain Russia for a decade. This starts off with the Maidan coup and then NATO's empowerment of Ukraine's Banderite neo-nazis by the way of providing them arms and training. The neo-nazis had been waging a war against their Russian speaking border regions for about a decade. NATO then blocked any diplomatic solutions to the ensuing tension between Russia and Ukraine. Merkel straight up said that the Minsk Accords that were agreed upon and signed were meant to buy Ukraine time rather than be honoured.

Given this Russia had the options of doing nothing and endure the containment or stymie NATO's expansion through a pre-emptive invasion. I would have liked if there was no need for a war. But this is just the continuation of USA's cold war that never ended even after USSR's dissolution. The fact is that Russia's mere existence as a sovereign country is something that USA and NATO find deeply offensive. A war like this was bound to happen at one point or another.

I'm thinking it's less "the invasion was justifed" and more "turns out actions have consequenses"

More justified than the US invading Vietnam or Cuba. In all three instances, a smaller country has declared its alignment to a certain ideology and wishes to become closer to superpowers with said ideology. The difference is that North Vietnam was prevented from even holding elections because the west knew that their government wasn’t corrupt and that they’d win legitimately against the cucks in the south. Cuba also had a popular revolution that tortured the souls of multiple administrations. Cuba (and Vietnam) didn’t have desires to be pushed around by the USSR just because they supported their causes, and because they have sympathy for the west whereas the USSR had a more militant mentality. The fucking Cubans cooperated with the FBI because they earnestly believed that they would help arrest Cuban exile terrorists, only for their spies and informants to get arrested and realize the US was helping said terrorists. Honestly you can add just about every fucking non-Warsaw Pact socialist country and non-aligned countries that got invaded or couped to this list.

Compare to modern Ukraine where westerners have declared it to be near the top of corruption indexes until after they got invaded, then magically they were democratic. Or how westerners were reporting on the huge Nazi influence in modern Ukraine until it got invaded, then suddenly it was a wholesome, pro LGBT, pro democracy imperfect nation. Ukraine, like most NATO members, have shown that they’re willing to do whatever the US wants, and the US has shown that it only seeks hostilities and suffering whether they pursue it themselves or with the alliance or with select members. Adding Ukraine as a member, right on the border of Russia, is a much more hostile move than most countries aligning with socialism and the USSR because Ukraine and NATO countries are willing to be a lap dog. And it’s funny because Russia and Putin were literally willing to be NATO lapdogs after the USSR fell, and yet the west rejected them because Russia as a concept needed to be punished for even daring to challenge the west.

Also, Putin keeps rattling his saber and warning the west and Ukraine if they cross XYZ line, and when they do, Putin just condemns them and maybe shoot a missile or two lol. He understands the existential stakes of nuclear warfare. The US, and Ukraine, do not care. To them, eternal damnation in nuclear holocaust is a small price to defeat Putin and Russia. They have a child’s mindset, whereas Cuba only escalated nuclear tensions because it was a non-hostile country that kept getting invaded and terrorized by the US.