I just had a Skype call with my dad and the decorated armchair general voiced this opinion of the Ukrainian civil war: Putin didn't plan this and he doesn't really benefit from this - he doesn't want the Ukraine to join the NATO, but the whole crisis was as much shock and pain in the ass for him as it was for Poroshenko. Putin just wanted to get the Crimean military port back under his control after Yanukovich's regime fell, with Crimea as a nice bonus, but then the annexation spurned the Donetsk rebels to declare their independence instead of simply protesting. Then, the Ukrainian government responded with force and the fighting started, and the Russian people looked at Putin and said "Mr. President, there are Russians in a bad pitch there. Aren't you going to rescue them?", and Vova had to do what he really didn't want to do and support the rebels with food and arms and occasionally with troops, because for him to chicken out of the conflict or to state that it's not his business would deal an incredible blow to his image as a strong, pro-Russian leader and thus to the cornerstone of his popularity. For this same reason, he doesn't want to agree to NATO's terms of conflict deescalation - doing so would be disastrous when the majority of his own people views him as unyielding anti-NATO warrior with starry eyes. But Putin sure tries to end this conflict as soon as possible - hence the Minsk ceasefire and his attempts to negotiate with NATO on a treaty, because while the war boosts his popularity, the whole enduring confrontation with the west is both harmful for Russia's economy and quite premature, as Putin is just plain not ready, with his still modernising army and a lack of anti-NATO bloc.
What do you think?