Russia featured prominently in the 2016 presidential campaign. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton depicted alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email servers and other high-profile political targets, including her own campaign staff, as evidence of a Kremlin plot to harm her candidacy and promote her Republican opponent, now President-elect Donald Trump. Trump consistently dismissed Clinton’s allegations as desperate political mudslinging and put forward a very different set of ideas for U.S. relations with Russia.

One early Russia-related dustup came in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambiguously translated comment that Trump was a “bright” or “colorful” candidate. Trump, in return, described Putin as a “better leader” than President Barack Obama and indicated that he hoped he and Putin could cooperate, especially in the fight against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Since then, Trump has been widely supported by both the state-supported Russian media and the Russian public, who saw in his candidacy an alternative to the hawkish, anti-Russian U.S. “establishment,” which to Russians is represented by Clinton. ...