Nobody here knows what Putin "really wants". We only know what he does: any effort to deduce motivation or desire is speculative.
What we know is that Putin has had troops positioned to intervene for months. He's had all the pretext he could ask for. The "rebels" have begged him to intervene. He hasn't. I don't know how that squares up with the assumption that he "really wants" Russian peacekeepers in Donetsk. If he really wanted them there, they'd have been there a long time ago.
This also seems inconsistent with that position:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...n-Ukraine.html
Haven't similar movements back and forth been going on for months? Why would NATO suddenly make a big fuss over it now?
I'm sure Putin will continue sending men and equipment to help his proxies, though they appear to be increasingly incoherent, conflicted, and unable to establish any functional political apparatus. I see no reason to assume that he wants to send in troops. If he wanted that it would be a fait accomplii already, as it was in Crimea. Again, we don't know why he hasn't moved: fear of sanctions, fear of bogging down in an occupation role... all conjecture. What we know is that he could have done it a long time ago, and has not.
He's spoken the words, but he hasn't acted on them. His proxies are retreating in disarray, fighting with each other and losing faith in his promises... and that's a win? What would you call a loss?
If even those ridiculously minimal sanctions, and a few threats, could force him to pull back, then all he's done is advertise his own vulnerability. How is that a win?
He can claim whatever he wants. What the world sees is that in May he looked set to seaize the Eastern Ukraine and possibly push across to Transnistria, cutting Ukraine off from the sea, and potentially threatening the rest of Eastern Europe... and today he looks set to settle for a bit of nebulously defined "influence" in Eastern Ukraine. Can't see that as a "win" in any sense.
How is that a loss? If the mere threat accomplishes the goal, what need is there for elevated sanctions?
The predicted threat did not materialize and looks less likeley to materialize every day... and it's entirely possible that a more active response involving military threats would have made matters worse, not better. If anything Putin has underscored his own weakness by backing down in the face of very limited sanctions and a few vague threats of more extensive ones. Can't call it a 100% win for the West, of course, as Crimea is realistically gone, but if Ukraine manages to re-establish functioning sovereignty over the east it is certainly not the huge Russian win that was being predicted here not long ago.