Russia and Putin are Winning

Getting your opponent taken over by a radical leader has worked in Russia.  Lenin was actually sent by train to Russia by Germany during WW1 to undermine the government and get the Russians out of the war.  The German plan worked perfectly as Russia devolved into a civil war and withdrew from WW1, freeing many German troops to go to the Western front to fight the English and French.

Helping Trump get elected is not quite as powerful and will not result in an immediate civil war in the USA, but it is paying big big dividends in terms of weakening the world's superpower.  We are lucky that Trump is not as smart as Lenin or as charismatic.

Not all of this can be directly tied to the Russians but they certainly helped:

1. Reduce the USA's stature in the world by getting an obvious blowhard, lying, racist narcissist elected President.
2. Make democracy look bad as Trump lost the popular vote, won the election, and he does not care about the people who did not vote for him.
3. Undermine the free press by having the President and his supporters call it "Fake News".  Kudos also to Rupert Murdoch for destroying trust in the press while running a company that considers itself part of the press.
4. Undermine the judicial system by having the President and his supporters attack judges, defendants, free speech, and the courts.
5. Undermine the US intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA) by having Trump accuse them of criminal acts and lying.
6. Making the USA look silly as they know the Russians manipulated the election, but cannot do anything about it since Trump is President.
7. Split the USA into two camps that detest each other:
1. Conservatives
2. Liberals

So the Russians are certainly winning at this point, we can only hope that this stops soon.