The Ukraine situation is a post-Cold War event with all of the Cold War rhetoric and drama. Does the West want to court the Ukraine? Of course. Does Putin and Mother Russia want her back? Of course. No one suggests otherwise, but to credit/blame the West for all of this is ludicrous. The Ukrainian President got what he deserved. Will his replacement or the West's guidance improve things dramatically? Likely not in the short run but likely so in the long run.
Putin wanting the Ukraine back makes more sense than the EU and West courting her (she is a neighbor, many are Russians, they have a history - breaking up is hard to do, and the setting sun makes her look so cute).
Sanctions have and will continue to hurt Russia. Russia has and will feel the pain; economists have estimated that Vlad's foray into Ukraine has already cost his country billions. IPOs have been delayed; loans are more difficult to get; oligarchs are transferring even more of their $ out of the country and a whole lot of billions which would have otherwise come into Mother Russia arent. Vlad needs cash flow. Desperately. Oil and natural gas give him that now, but the hand writing is on that wall and he knows it. He also has huge debt (Olympics, infrastructure), a lot of internal corruption, societal and cultural malaise and a hangover from the post Cold War era and what was lost. A lage part of Vlad's peacockery is intended to re-build Russia's pride and self esteem (most of it is he is simply a peacock). He lined his tanks up and no one blinked. He supported the rebels and the Ukrainians didn't really meet them with roses and wine, including the pro-Russian Ukrainians. His rebels shot down the wrong plane and gave him the worst thing he could have gotten at the moment - a loss of prestige, credibility and bad, really, really bad, PR. So he takes his tanks back home, returns to his sand pile, looks over his shoulder and says that 'yeah, but my dad can kick your ass "the West better not mess with nuclear Russia."
Will it cause a lot of changes in their behavior? Who knows, but it appears in the short run to have, and it will likely do so more in the long run. Can it result in unintended consequences? Of course. Can courting the Ukraine also result in unintended consequence? Of course. But consider what all of the whining nannies on this site and around the world would be saying if the West did nothing and Vlad, in a worst case scenario, used his political and economic clout to re-take as much of the former Soviet empire as possible. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. The West should not humiliate or cripple either Putin or Russia, but the measures taken to this point have been methodical. And effective.
As I've pointed out before, new sources of gas and oil are being built, laid, configured, engieered and worked out financially as we speak. Vlad knows that; using his natural resources as a lever is short for his economic world.
It really would help if those making definitive, reactionary and broad brushed statements about such topics knew what they were talking about.