Putin hates Clinton’s guts with a burning passion. After Russia’s 2011 elections that had the appearance of wide scale electoral cheating, Clinton as SecState called this out, and Putin was livid (people being called out on serious ethical breaches typically get extra pissed).
Russia’s had serious ongoing human rights violations. The state controlled media’s propaganda against homosexuality and wide scale brutal oppression isn’t widely reported on, but it’s absolutely evil. The US under Clinton levied some sanctions on Russia for those human rights abuses.
Clinton was involved in some of the initial funny business (carried on by Kerry) in Ukraine that resulted in the 2014 election with Russia’s puppet losing and an EU friendly Poroshenko taking power, which ended in Russia invading Ukraine, triggering a civil war, and starting the continuing occupation of Crimea. After this, the US imposed major sanctions on Russia that are ongoing. Those sanctions have been very damaging to Russia’s economy. Clinton was open that she wanted to increase sanctions to push Russia on the issue of their illegal occupation of Crimea. She’s also been involved in
There’s much more, but US-Russian relations have been tense, Clinton’s been very steadfast in opposing Russian corruption, human rights abuses, and military buildups towards and attacks on neighbors, and Putin hates her guts for it.
Trump, on the other hand, not only has none of that baggage, but was so stupid he was fawning over Putin, and hired pro-Russian individuals in his campaign, some who were on Moscow’s payroll, and he even softened the GOP’s platform on Ukraine.
So between the option of the woman who would increase sanctions and pressure Russia on Ukraine, and the guy who wanted to cripple NATO, updated the GOP party platform to soften language on Ukraine, and could be easily manipulated into dropping sanctions, there’s a whole lot of reasons for Russia to back Trump. There are other angles are well, it’s complicated.
This article lays out some of the things I rambled about much better:
