No Stupid Questions

Both sides were the aggressors in general and each side had moments where they were the more active part leading to confrontations.

I don't think the cold war can be described as one single conflict with a clear aggressor, which is the whole point why it is called a cold war.

I'm not knowledgeable enough if there are statistics about which side was more in the wrong or did more aggressor stuff.

But for me, knowing that the USA did the Iran and CIA stuff while the USSR did Afghanistan and KGB stuff is enough for me to decide both were elitist assholes that didn't care for normal humans but just wanted to increase their own power.

Yes.

It depended on where in the world you were. Both Russia and America wanted to avoid full on conflict so they established proxy wars to try weaken the other. America was certainly the aggressor in Vietnam and Korea while Russia was the aggressor in Cuba and arguably in Afghanistan amongst a whole myriad of other conflicts

The cold

Nobody? That's why it was a cold war.

Both the U.S. and the Soviets supported countless proxy wars across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and the Carribean, with weapons, training, manpower, and a lot of propaganda. So many small conflicts were blown up to huge ones by massive amounts of funding and support from the two nuclear superpowers. They both had numerous spy operations involving the CIA and KGB respectively. Both sides were aggressive, there was no side that was not.

Nobody that's why it was cold. Both sides were ramping up and preparing for the other to attack. They engaged in proxy wars and demonstrations of their power and capabilities. But the cost of attacking was everything and neither was willing to sacrifice life on earth without being attacked first.

Two powers wanted to build a politically favorable buffer zone, but it was the same buffer zone.

The belligerents in a cold war are limited to being passive aggressive.

Neither and both. They both wanted their world view to dominate and did so by influencing a bunch of countries. The US fucked up all of South America during that time, Afghanistan, Iran, Vietnam, Korea, and probably a few countries in Africa. The Soviet Union wasn't innocent in all of this fighting their proxy wars against the US.

In order to know who the aggressor in this contrived war was, look at the money that flowed to both sides of the war. You won't like the answer otherwise.