Putin issued the request in response to what he said was a threat to the lives of Russian citizens and military forces located in naval bases in Ukraine’s southern peninsula of Crimea.
All 90 Senators present in the 116-member Federation Council voted in support of armed action.
The move comes amid reports of large Russian troop movements in Crimea and a week after opposition parties swept to power in Kiev when ousted President Viktor Yanukovych suddenly fled the city.
Russian troops will remain deployed until the “political-social situation in the country is normalized,” the Kremlin said in a statement requesting the intervention.
The exact size of any planned deployment is not yet known, but Federation Council Senator Viktor Ozerov said after Saturday’s vote that the decision on how many troops could be involved would be taken by Putin.
Senators in the Federation Council lined up during an extraordinary session to express their support for armed intervention.
Much of the focus of debates in the upper house was on the seizure of power by opposition groups last week, which marked the culmination of three months of anti-government protests ignited by Yanukovych’s decision to back away from a planned deal to enhance economic and political ties with the EU.
Lawmakers accused the United States and European countries of open support for violent protesters in Ukraine.
Deputy Speaker Yury Vorobyov said protesters in Kiev were trained in Poland and Latvia with US money and that if Russia did not intervene militarily it would be tragedy for the Ukrainian people.
Another Deputy Speaker, Yevgeny Bushmin, said that 143,000 people had fled Ukraine to Russia since the start of protests against Yanukovych in November. There is no independent evidence of such refugees, and no other senior officials in either Russia or Ukraine have made such claims.
The vote follows a wave of pro-Russian protests in southern and eastern Ukraine, as well as calls from the newly elected prime minister of Crimea for Putin to intervene.
The ratcheting up of Russian rhetoric over Ukraine and widespread reports of the presence of Russian troops already maneuvering on Ukrainian soil has provoked outrage in Kiev and condemnation from world leaders.
US President Barack Obama said Friday that he was deeply concerned about Russian troop movements, and warned that violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty would be deeply destabilizing.
Interim Ukrainian government officials have said Russia is trying to provoke conflict, and have called on the Kremlin to withdraw all soldiers back to Russian naval bases on the Black Sea coast.
Vladimir Klitschko, a former boxing champion who was a prominent leader in the protest movement, called on interim President Oleksandr Turchynov to demand that the UN Security Council immediately convene an extraordinary session.
He also called on parliament to declare full mobilization over what he described as “aggression against Ukraine.”
Steven Pifer, a veteran diplomat who served as US Ambassador to Ukraine in the 1990s, wrote on Twitter that Moscow’s declared intent to launch military action was in violation of a treaty signed by Russia, the United States, Britain and Ukraine in 1994.
“As one who helped [negotiate the] 1994 memorandum, [there is] no doubt in my mind that Russia is violating its commitments,” Pifer wrote.
US Senator John McCain, who addressed hundreds of thousands of protesters in Kiev last year, tweeted Saturday that the Russian parliament's decision was "straight out of Soviet playbook."
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