MOSCOW >> The Kremlin may prefer that Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in the presidential election, but among hard-liners and ordinary Russians, hopes that either candidate could help bring a swift end to the war in Ukraine 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.

In 2016, pro-government officials in Russia’s parliament celebrated Trump’s victory by popping dozens of bottles of Champagne.

At that time, there was a genuine belief that the Republican political newcomer could overturn U.S. sanctions against Russia for its illegal annexation in 2014 of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, make changes to the global order by paying less attention to democratic principles and human rights ideals, and, perhaps, even lavish President Vladimir Putin with the type of respect he believed he deserved as the leader of a country with 11 time zones.

Eight years later, members of the Russian ruling class are more pessimistic.

“The elections will not change anything for Russia since the candidates’ positions fully reflect the bipartisan consensus on the need for our country to be defeated,” Dmitry Medvedev, a former president and prime minister of Russia who now serves as deputy chair of the Security Council of Russia, wrote Monday on Telegram.

That sentiment is prevalent in a Russia that feels scorned and underestimated by Democrat administrations and betrayed by Trump, who openly praised Putin but in 2018 reversed Obama-era prohibitions on selling anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.

“Officials in the Kremlin were screaming at one another in shock,” remembered Alexei Venediktov, the former editor of Ekho Moskvy, a popular radio station that the government shut down after the invasion of Ukraine. “The sense of betrayal was palpable.”

The U.S. vote comes at a critical juncture for Ukraine as it struggles to recruit enough troops and maintain financial and military support from Western allies.

Russia has gained an upper hand on the battlefield, U.S. military and intelligence officials have concluded. But Moscow may also face its own troop shortages as the end of a third year of fighting nears. Should he win, Trump has promised to end the war before his inauguration, without describing how or saying that he wants Ukraine, America’s ally, to win.

Medvedev, who has derided Harris as “stupid, inexperienced and controllable,” said he did not have faith in the Republican candidate to end the war, either. Trump would “be forced to comply with the system’s rules” and “will not be able to stop the war — not in a day, not in three days, not in three months.”

The only thing that mattered is how much money Congress is willing to spend on supporting Ukraine’s military, he said, using a vulgar expression.

“That’s why the candidate the Kremlin really wants is Mr. or Mrs. Chaos,” said Venediktov. “Their ideal candidate is whoever brings chaos, whatever makes the USA weaker in terms of domestic politics. If the result brings people to the streets, mires the political process in court proceedings, anything that pushes Ukraine down the U.S. agenda, it can be considered good for Russia.”

Some observers say Russian leaders are playing down any support for Trump not only because of a sense of betrayal, but also not to seem eager for a Republican victory, considering the Kremlin’s well-documented history of interference in 2016 to shift the results in Trump’s favor and new allegations of Russian efforts to influence the vote Tuesday and cast doubt on its result.