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The folks in the Eastern Ukraine I am speaking about are ethnic Russians. The Russians planted their own people across the Soviet Union to provide an inherent third column and buffer against local populations. As you can see, the Crimea is a Russian-speaking area:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/UkraineNativeLanguagesCensus2001detailed-en.png/1024px-UkraineNativeLanguagesCensus2001detailed-en.png

When the American Broadcasting Board of Governors and Gallup polled residents of Crimea, they found 82.8% believed the Crimean status referendum Crimeans’ views and 73.9% thought annexation would positively impact their lives.

The Pew Research Centre survey found 91% of Crimeans thought that the vote was free and fair.

Things in Crimea are unlike English language dominance of Montréal, where most natives spoke French at home. Kiev was essentially disregarding Crimea until it was too late.