Having the same thought. Russia seems to be taking extreme measures. Why? I suspect that emails may come out that really damage our relationship with them.
unlike any other election. ever.
Here's my thought: what we are the seeing is the opening stages of a global conflict to determine who will rule the 21st century. Russia has made a calculation that it will not be the United States.
They see the weakness of our leaders and they are taking advantage. Russia, seeing the anti-Russian nature of US and EU foreign policy since the 90's with expanded NATO membership and the strategic imbalance caused by ABM, have come to the conclusion that they must do something to check western influence in the world.
The word on the street is that Putin became quite paranoid after the Arab Spring and Ukraine. What he sees is the Obama policy of overthrowing governments through the use of weaponized NGO's (Soros in Ukraine and the Twitter/Facebook revolution dubbed the Arab Spring). The final straw for him was in fact Ukraine and Syria. That was his red line. We are seeing the repercussions of the Russian response.
Putin has activated a hybrid warfare approach to checking western aggression. Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, Syria, along with using cyber, propaganda, psych warfare on other nations in Eastern Europe (including NATO members) to ensure that Obama (or Hillary) doesn't get any ideas. God knows if Hillary got in she'll do everything she can to do to Putin what she did to Qaddafi.
Then there's the nuclear dimension. This could all just be nuclear saber rattling. Pulling people back, having massive drills in Russia seems to be designed for two things. To put the Russian people on a war footing for domestic purposes and to convince western powers that Russia is on a war footing in order to get concessions. After all, their calculation is that we are weak and will fold.