The Russian influence was to further divide Americans against each other, by propping up candidates that would win due to such strong support from the fringes.

The Russian influence was to further divide Americans against each other, by propping up candidates that would win due to such strong support from the fringes. These people would be distasteful to the other side and stir the shit. Without a coherent national response from the US, Russia would go in unopposed. This would have worked (see the early republicans response, and the democratic response to that which weakened US focus on the invasion), except the rest of the world stepped up. Maybe the last 6 years of US shitshow woke up the rest of the word to the fact they cannot count on America in quite the same way.