Surely the Russian people must be grateful for our support!
Considering American support was critical for the IMF to loan billions of the Russian state so they could pay long overdue wages, I would suspect that yes many Russians in 1996 would be highly grateful. "American Advisors" were recruited by Yeltsin's government, not the other way around, and direct connections with the Clinton admin are tenuous. The advisors didn't break into opposition offices and then leak dirt to the media, they organized voter strategies, taught the Russians how to conduct their polling to gather information more effectively, and advised the Yeltsin boys on how you were supposed to run a campaign because nobody had that kind of experience in Russia. It wasn't illegal, although if it had become public knowledge it likely would have tanked the Yeltsin campaign as their communist opposition would portray Boris as an American puppet. Not that Boris being pro-west was really a secret, part of his campaign was based on him saying that only he had the sufficient credentials as a reformer to secure cooperation and loans from western institutions.
More troubling than getting help from people who know how to run political campaigns who happened to be Americans was the total support from the famed Oligarchs, who formed a united front behind Yeltsin and between them and the state, had complete control over major Russian media outlets. There's also a major possibility that genuine vote fraud was conducted in some regions. And of course, the fact that major elements in Yeltsin's government were considering
cancelling the election if polling made a defeat seem inevitable.
This sort of false equivalence was definitely rife among alt-right media circles in about December 2016 though, when all of the Trump-Russia connection stuff was coming out as part of the dual track strategy of "NO PUPPET, NO PUPPET", and "AMERICA DOES IT TOO SO SHUT UP".