Moving to Russia is an extreme outlier. These people exist but there's only a dozen or so. Numbers are not much different than the late Soviet era. In the 1920s thousands of Americans moved to Russia to build communism. Many also came back disillusioned, or died in a gulag.

On the other hand there's hundreds of thousands of diaspora Russians, and they're very pro russian. Richard Spencer's ex wife is a good example of this. Overall this is a much bigger impact than the dozen converts or a few thousand half hearted Harper's.

Obviously before the war Russia was less publicly objectionable. In Syria everyone just hated ISIS.

The /pol/ effect is nostalgia for worlds that no longer exist and we're not personally experienced. It's political flavored nostalgia instead of Pokémon collecting.

In terms of American twitter Russiagate and making Russia a red/blue partisan issue has been the most disastrous. It's simple contrarianism.