So what are you saying? That the people of eastern Ukraine should start a shooting war instead of planning a vote?
The “people” don’t need to shoot anybody to get the weak Ukrainian central govt out of E. Ukraine if they really wanted to. A real popular revolt would be over in a day.
Very few folks want to live under gangster government. The Russians give guns to bus station drunks. Everybody can see how the Russians and their hired stooges are behaving. Kidnapping journalists and parading hostages on TV. Murdering a politician. It’s revolting.
There is no wide popular support for this type of peoples “government” in E. Ukraine. Putin would lose a free vote after all this astroturfed mayhem. His only card left is invasion.
So why not plan the vote, instead of sending troops into eastern Ukraine to turn these protests into a shooting war?