What did Russia hope to accomplish?

According to testimony in the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings, "Russia certainly seeks to promote Western candidates sympathetic to their worldview and foreign policy objectives. But winning a single election is not their end goal. Russian Active Measures hope to topple democracies through the pursuit of five complementary objectives:

• Undermine citizen confidence in democratic governance

• Foment and exacerbate divisive political fractures

• Erode trust between citizens and elected officials and democratic institutions

• Popularize Russian policy agendas within foreign populations

• Create general distrust or confusion over information sources by blurring the lines between fact and fiction

From these objectives, the Kremlin can crumble democracies from the inside out creating political divisions resulting in two key milestones: 1) the dissolution of the European Union and 2) the break up of the North American Treaty Organization (NATO). Achieving these two victories against the West will allow Russia to reassert its power globally."

Before taking office Donald Trump called NATO "obsolete" and refused to be bound by its charter, and supported Britain's exit ("Brexit") from the EU. (As president he reportedly discussed pulling the US out of NATO. ) He also supported the French presidential candidate who wanted France to leave the European Union. Because of these positions and others supporting their long term goals of dismantling those alliances, the Russian government openly preferred a Trump presidency.

Putin himself was asked at a press conference if he wanted Trump to win. He said, "Yes, I did, because he was the one who wanted to normalize relations with Russia.”

The CIA, NSA, and FBI have said that "The Kremlin sought to advance its longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, the promotion of which Putin and other senior Russian leaders view as a threat to Russia and Putin’s regime." In service of these goals, they say, "Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him." These conclusions were confirmed by the (Republican led) Senate Intelligence Committee in 2018.

In addition, the same declassified intelligence report states that: "Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him."



Putin also had reason to believe that Trump would be more likely to lift sanctions on Russia including especially the Magnitsky Act, and accept Russia's terms for ending the war in Syria (which Trump has done.) He had reason to hope for an American-brokered pro-Russia "peace plan" for Ukraine. Additional Russian foreign policy goals he might have hoped to advance include distancing the US from European allies, preventing environmental accords from hurting Russian oil and gas exports, and breaking up any trade deals and treaties which disadvantage Russia.

Former CIA agent John Sipher believes "The attack against the 2016 U.S. presidential election is as much aimed at an internal Russian audience as at foreign rivals. The message to Russians is that Putin is a respected and feared force on the world stage and that they should stand in awe of his strength." The Atlantic's foreign policy correspondent, Julia Ioffe, believes that Putin is "really just a gambler who won big" and that "Putin’s fears of being deposed by the U.S.," which the U.S. did little to soothe, "Pushed him toward ever higher levels of antagonism. So has his political situation—the need to take ever larger foreign risks to shore up support at home, as the economy has struggled." Fiona Hill, a Russia expert who served on the National Security Council under Donald Trump, said in 2016: “When Putin tries to interpret what we do, as his speeches and interviews often reveal, he falls back on his (and Russia’s) age-old threat perceptions. He is not always able to distinguish fiction from fact when he looks out at the West, because his tools for doing so are sometimes inadequate.”