Riddle me this - how come the vast majority of fake news/manipulation/etc identified has either been simply divisive materials that directly supported neither candidate - or actually promoted Hillary?
Obviously, the Russians would have preferred the weak and corruptible Hillary Clinton as POTUS. Trump is the very last kind of POTUS that Putin would help win an election.
However, it is quite possible Putin realized that the best way to hurt Trump would be by cultivating the appearance that he was helping him.