Go back further. I've pointed it out before (think I even wrote out a long post and cited articles even) about how the Russians were known to have been buddying up to US politicians in the 2000s, with their goal being ending a law that allowed sanctioning countries for human rights violations that had been created specifically to deal with the Soviet Union and was likely the real cause of the fall of the Soviet Union as it put them on course for economic failure. They were damn close to getting it too until Putin's dipshit thugs killed the lawyer (Magnitsky) of some rich American businessman (Bill Browder) after their grifting of him didn't work, wherein he then came back to the US and told politicians about it. And then within months (after years of the Russians working politicians in DC), not only did the law not get removed, but it got strengthened and new sanctions imposed.
Its what set Putin off so much and why he then started pulling all the other shenanigans. I actually now think that Obama Admin might have been looking at working with the Russians with regards to the sanctions in order to put a stop to other behavior (that eventually turned into the Ukraine and Syrian situations ), which is where the "once the election is over we can be more flexible" or whatever was about, I think it was a carrot that could have meant Russia doing nothing or possibly even handing over Assad, preventing Syria from descending into chaos.
I've pontificated that what we've seen occur is that as "greed is Good/God" American business flooded Russia following the fall of the Soviet Union, that they saw the corruption the Russians got away with against their own people (and actually had to partake in to get their business in Russia) and decided to bring that back to the US, which is why things have become what they have. And the Russians saw opportunity to expand their corruption elsewhere by following Americans' example. Which is why there were Russian mobsters living in Turmp Tower. But in order to do that they had to prevent economic sanctions from being able to reign them in, which is why Russia was trying to get that law undone, as then they would be unfettered to do that (and so wouldn't have to resort to the shadier clandestine shit, using the Russian mob, or having to act like normal white collar criminals like the Panama Papers revealed).