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Assuming the Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security is correct that:
only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities
Why would a Trump presidency be in Russia's interest?
There are multitude of reasons (and absent Putin's confidential documents being leaked, no way to be sure at this time). Three of the possibilities:
Russians - and especially Putin's cohort - have a deep and abiding hatred of Bill Clinton over his aggression against Serbia and him engineering what Russia sees as theft of Kosovo.
This is not something most Americans appreciate, but to Russians, Serbs are basically blood brothers. Not just in a sense of "We will post angry comments on YouTube", but in a sense of "the last time a major power threatened Serbia, Russia brought its full military might as a state to bear. The year was 1914".
It is not inconceivable that Hillary is seen by Russian powers as Bill Clinton's Presidency #3. They would go to great lengths to avoid that. I would dismiss the motive being pure revenge on Bill, as too hot-blooded and short-sighted for Russian power elites.
Plus, Clinton, aside from being seen as a likely Bill #3, would also be seen as Obama #3, as far as foreign policy (her being a happy cheerleader of it as his SecState).
Russians aren't too happy with the intent (as opposed to execution) of Obama's foreign policy, which they see as antagonistic to them, and a continuation of since-1990 encroachment that successive US governments acted upon, with moving NATO closer to Russia's heartland and chipping away at Russia's geopolitical positions.
An opposite explanation is that, conversely, Russian power elites view Republican presidency as detrimental to their geopolitical interests (this is not quite about personalities of Clinton or Trump but more about the prevailing ideologies of "America is Great" vs "Kumbaya" that drive the two parties, to condense the ideas to bumper sticker levels.
This is not as contradictory to #1/#2 above as it seems, since they see both R and D as anti-Russian, but Rs as far more determined and effective at it, due to absence of peacenicks and American-nonexceptionalism in the party.
If that is the case, it's not inconceivable that they played a masterful psychological game, and deliberately created an obvious appearance of helping Trump, in the hopes that it would damage his candidacy (granted, a cheaper way to achieve the same result would have been to give Trump a gift of a free microphone, but I digress).
Trump is more isolationist and if USA stays away from the rest of the world that would give Russia more space to operate.
Because Clinton promises a war against Syria and Russia whereas Trump promised a hand of friendship and ally with Assad to fight the terrorism in the Middle East. Trump sounds considerate and sane. Who do you think would Russians to prefer?
It is resonable, it is what Russian Media says, in including Putin himself. But, this is not acceptable reason, right? Russians must have a cunning plan. You cannot, but Russians certainly have it and we must silence the outright reason. We must ascribe our reasons to Russians. This way, we can be more efficient to combat their cunning plan. It is always easier to demonize the enemy by not letting them speak and ascribing our dirty insinuations to em.
