i was just asking myself this same question yesterday...

...if putin/russia has anything to gain from this i don't see it. seems risky with too many bad outcomes to me.

I wouldn't exactly call EU a military superpower and putin knows this.

I agree, Russia getting in the way not only doesn't help, but increases the internal problems making the needed elections far more difficult.

They should have stood aside and let the the police or army do their job with the illegal militia.

Putin's biggest dream is to establish the Eurasian Economic Union. The current possible members for that union are naturally Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia itself. The other member candidates are Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

As you might have noticed above, Ukraine was not listed. As being a former USSR state and otherwise having a strong connections to Russia, Putin is naturally interested in to get Ukraine into the union. If the western minded government takes Ukraine to itself, that means there is no way the country would join to the EAU. Instead of that they will try get themselves in the EU = Russia will completely lost its power in Ukraine.

"Protecting" the Russian minority in Ukraine is just a transparent excuse, Russia has been doing the same here, in Finland a long time. Well, no tanks on the streets yet, but Russia is eager to involve itself to the politic discussion over here every now and then.

STRATFOR (that "American global intelligence company" whose internal emails got leaked on Wikileaks about 2 years ago) posted an interesting analysis on the Ukraine protests a few weeks ago. It contains a somewhat good overview of what motives drive the various parties (U.S.A., Russia, EU, Germany) in the current conflict in Ukraine.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/perspectives-ukrainian-protests

Since nobody here will follow the link anyway, I'll just post what might be considered the conclusion of their analysis:

As in most matters, it is important to understand where the United States fits in, if at all. Washington strongly supported the Orange Revolution, creating a major rift with Russia. The current policy of avoiding unnecessary involvement in Eurasian conflicts would suggest that the United States would stay out of Ukraine. But Russian behavior in the Snowden affair has angered Washington and opened the possibility that the United States might be happy to create some problems for Moscow ahead of the Sochi Olympics. The U.S. government may not be supporting nongovernmental organizations as much as its counterparts in Europe are, but it is still involved somewhat. In fact, Washington may even have enjoyed putting Russia on the defensive after having been put on the defensive by Russia in recent months.

In any case, the stakes are high in Ukraine. The Russians are involved in a game they cannot afford to lose. There are several ways for them to win it. They only need to make the EU opening untenable for the Ukrainians, something Ukraine's economic and social conditions facilitate. The Europeans are not going to be surging into Ukraine anytime soon, and while Poland would prefer that Ukraine remain neutral, Warsaw does not necessarily need a pro-Western Ukraine. The United States is interested in Ukraine as an irritant to Russia but is unwilling to take serious risks.

A lot of countries have an interest in Ukraine, none more so than Russia. But for all the noise in Kiev and other cities, the outcome is unlikely to generate a definitive geopolitical shift in Ukraine. It does, however, provide an excellent example of how political unrest in a strategically critical country can affect the international system as a whole.

In most countries, the events in Kiev would not have generated global interest. When you are a country like Ukraine, even nominal instability generates not only interest but also pressure and even intervention from all directions. This has been the historical problem of Ukraine. It is a country in an important location, and the pressures on it tend to magnify any internal conflicts until they destabilize the country in excess of the significance of the internal issues. Germany and the United States may continue to pursue goals that will further irritate Russia, but as Stratfor indicated in our 2014 annual forecast, they will avoid actions that would risk harming Moscow's ties with Washington and Berlin. Russian influence in Ukraine is currently being limited by the proximity of the Olympics and the escalation in protests on the ground, but the fundamental geopolitical reality is that no country has a higher stake in Ukraine than Russia, nor a better ability to shape its fate.

Moscow's stock exchange has lost 11% today

Regardless of what they're doing, they won't be able to do it for very long at the pace investment is flying away

Interesting, at 04.00 Ukraine army have to surrend or else a attack will follow..

The Ukrain army is trained by the Russians and mostly exist out of pro Russia and people with a Russian heritage, also the weapons and vehicles are bought from Russia and are outdated. Good luck?

Financially this is also very interesting, it is the first time that during a crisis like this one that the Dollar is not succesfull on the market in fact it is falling now...

First off just the annexation of crimea. Later the whole of ukraine. For now he cab only to get crimea because the majority of the population is russian afilliated. There is a vote coming up that decides whether crimea should be a sovereign state and break free from the ukraine. If the population votes for it then it will be much easier to annex them politically. The rest of the ukraine will be a long ways off unles they intend an armed conflict with europe. Right now it is being heavily debated within the EU to start financial sanctions towards russia

Seems like the EU and the US instigated Ukrainian revolt in the hopes the country would join the EU / NATO and quietly drift away from Russian influence. The Western leaders didn't predict either the influence of the ultra-nationalists of the Right Sector, or the willingness of Russia to protect their interests.

I predict mid-term economic uncertanity for Russia and their investments, due to sanctions, but the blow on the face of Washington and Brussels over their obvious inability to come together and do something effective while Crimea is annexed and Ukraine possibly falls to civil war will damage them the hardest.

He wants influence in neighboring countries. Even if he sends so called peacekeeping troops, he will get that influence bc the Ukrainian government would need putin.