The Kremlin may quietly prefer that Donald Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in the U.S. presidential election Tuesday. But among hard-liners and ordinary Russians, hopes that either candidate could help bring a swift end to the war in Ukraine — by stopping military aid and effectively forcing Ukraine to accept Russia’s occupation of its territory — are low.

And whatever the results, the prospect of improved U.S.-Russia relations seems even more distant.

"We don’t have anyone to root for,” Dmitry Kiselyov, an anchor at the state-run Channel 1 TV station, said on a Sunday show. "That’s why we are just calmly observing,” he asserted, even as U.S. authorities recently accused Russian operatives of using disinformation to try to sway the election.