Considering they hate us this is their best move.

This is a super naive way of looking at geopolitics, especially regarding China. We are their biggest trade ally. If the US crumbles, both of our economies implode. Trump wants to put insane tariffs on our imports from China. An economically strong US is to China's benefit since we are their single biggest trade ally (comparable to the entire European Union, which includes major trade allies as well). A strong US is not "China's biggest hurdle."

Russia geopolitically benefits from Trump in power because, among other things, Trump is fine letting Russia continue to ravage Ukraine with war and wants to pull us out of NATO (or at least cut funding to it). We don't have strong trade relations with Russia so they aren't directly affected if we economically flounder (the weak trade relations is why the sanctions on Russia did basically nothing long-term; Russia was already doing very little trade with the US).

China is not interested in "destabilizing the west." They would obviously benefit from being the economic center of the world, but they get there via strong geopolitical and economic relations with other relevant countries (which means not trying to cause those countries to collapse). Russia has less incentive to avoid causing turmoil in the US and EU, but right now it would very directly benefit from a Trump presidency, which in this case would be the driver behind Russia's decision to help put Trump back in power.

It started with Bill Browder and the Magnitsky Act. The timelines are so close together that it’s hard to separate, but I think that the Magnitsky Act was when the real motivation came in on the Russian side, and Snowden (and any possible additional fuckin with they were able to do because of intel they gathered from him; I won’t say you are wrong) came afterwards, as their efforts were just first starting to gather momentum. But I definitely remember that as of Snowden getting asylum, they were already heavily actively engaged in ways to fuck with us, in a way I don’t think they were prior to 2012.

It’s sad and ironic and displeasing. The Magnitsky Act was a very rare instance of the US doing something on the world stage that really was motivated at least in part by simple concern for human rights. And we paid the biggest price for it - up to and including this present godawful clusterfuck of a well-funded and -equipped GOP explicitly trying to destroy America and making pretty good progress on it so far - far more than any consequences we ever face for doing our standard war criminal geopolitical evil.

The dude sacrificed his comfortable life to tell us that the feds are violating the 4th amendment on a regular basis and you're calling him a traitor? Fuck you

Yeah I basically channelled my father for that one lol Last time I saw him it was just a firehose of fox news talking points...

It all depends on why you're talking about Russia.

Russia wants Trump to win: No! Fake News! He's the hardest on Russia, more than any president ever! The Democrats are the ones working for Putin!

Russia in general: Russia is a great country with a strong leader, it's good to see Republicans pushing to emulate that! Ukraine would have never been invaded if Republicans were in power!