I don't really believe the Russians are trying to influence the outcome of the American presidential election. Would the rookie Trump with a possible Putin crush really be better or worse than the blackmail-vulnerable Clinton?
Really, the Russians have seen America as a threat whether we had President Bush 43 or the anti-Bush, President Obama. If both of them were deemed hostile to Russia, could anybody be seen as friendly or compliant?
My view is that Russia is meddling in our election to weaken whoever wins and more importantly to weaken the appeal of American-supported democracy around the world--and especially the appeal in Russia itself.
Remember, Russia's rulers consider the series of "color" revolutions for democracy as little more than American plots to deny Russia client states and to destabilize Russia itself with the "alien" invasion of democracy.
UPDATE: While Trump may have an autocrat crush on Putin, don't dismiss the Clinton ties to Russia's top dog.
UPDATE: These analysts agree:
[Putin's] aim is to discredit the U.S. election process. I don’t think he really thinks he can get Trump into power. I don’t think he particularly cares, frankly. In some ways, Hillary Clinton might be just as good, if not better [from Putin’s perspective], because Putin constantly needs a confrontation with somebody. If Hillary wins by a narrow margin and has a limited room for maneuver, Putin may be just as happy. So at the moment, he is confronting the whole American election system. The dirtier the election, the messier it is, the better.
Read it all. And note that the possibility of further disintegration of the Russian state is raised.
I never assumed that the loss of the eastern European portions of the Russian empire in 1989 and further losses after the fall of the USSR in 1991 represented the end of territorial losses for Moscow.
