Nice try, the south and west are a majority ethnic Ukrainian even though the majority speaks Russian. The area that is attached to Crimea is only about 15% Russian. Putin just might lose a fair vote.
That's where it's beyond belief the way the Kiev thugs have handled things. If they had a popular vote immediately after Crimea became part of Russia, I'd think they would've won. Why? All of those Crimean pro-Russian votes would be gone. Even before that, I wonder if there would've been a problem at all if they hadn't almost immediately removed Russian as an official language.
And now they're getting loans they can never pay back from the IMF and US to pay the higher prices for gas, rather than behaving like a sensible nation that could benefit economically from being the buffer between Russia and EU.
I doubt they could govern any worse than they're doing.