Who is the Kremlin’s Favored Candidate in the US Presidential Election?

As the US presidential election approaches, the Kremlin has been unusually dismissive of American politics, maintaining the appearance of skeptical disinterest, even as Vladimir Putin, apparently jokingly, has said he supports Kamala Harris. However, both the official detachment and preference for Harris aim to mislead. Moscow is still very much interested in who the next US president will be, and that person’s position on Ukraine—the key interest for the Kremlin and Putin—is the crux of the matter. There is a view among Russian, liberal-minded social scientists that the Russian state’s self-image is based on contrasting itself with the United States, its “constituting other.” The significant efforts of the Russian government dedicated to criticizing the United States and presenting it as the main threat to Russian sovereignty and even antithesis to its civilization give credit to this view. However, in the recent months, there has been a noticeable decrease in the amount of attention that Russian politicians, state media, and experts paid to the US presidential campaign, which would normally not be the case. It would be naive to assume that the Kremlin lost interest, as this decrease would suggest on face value. Review of what the Kremlin’s activities with regards to the US elections shows that many of the components of its multifaceted strategy to influence US politics remain the same: covert and overt online disinformation and influence campaigns, which now increasingly rely on artificial intelligence, leveraging fake social media accounts, and cyberattacks. However, the facade of disinterest is a new component, suggesting that the Kremlin has learned from previous mistakes and is trying more subtle tactics.