Which side do you think wants these elections to go forward most? I think it is safe to say the ethnic Ukranian side. A quick look at Wikipedia shows that over 75% of Ukrainians are of ethnic Ukrainian decent. Only 17.3% are of Russian ethnicity. And the Russian's actions of late have almost certainly hardened the opinion of ethnic Ukranians to look to the West. Putin may have grabbed the Crimea, but my guess is he's lost ethnic Ukranians for perhaps generations.
As to your other points, I really wouldn't mind too terribly if the solidly ethnic Russian areas were allowed to vote to secede and join Russia. Maybe that is what it would take to resolve this, but make no mistake the result would be the permanent loss to Russia of most of it's "Ukranian buffer zone" - at least until they invade it again (which is precisely why the remainder of Ukraine would immediately try to join NATO and the EU with renewed vigor). Perhaps a few areas would even go with the Russians, but my feeling is that support for joining Russia is vastly overstated even in the most Eastern regions. Don't think a lot of this separatist activity isn't being engineered by Russian operatives, special forces, coordination, etc.
Look, the Russians have their own interests. I don't blame them for that. China has its own interests too, as do all nations. My biggest gripe is with this naive idiot we have in the White House who thought he was the golden (err, half black) boy who could just talk his way into everyone loving us. This kumbaya garbage just doesn't work.
Putin, in my view, has played a masterful hand so far with poor cards. Russia isn't that strong, and most of its army is 3rd world rabble (albeit with some great equipment they can't afford to maintain properly or train enough with). He can't project power in any meaningful way and his economy isn't that strong. While it may not appear that way now, Putin has taken his country backward in the long run. Whatever "democracy" was taking root has been nearly wiped out, there is no longer any free press, dissent has been squashed almost entirely - none of this is good for the Russian people in the long term. Perhaps Putin knows this and believes the one thing he can do is seize territory and rebuild the old empire, then try to run with the China model of allowing free markets with no political freedom.
I’d becareful speaking in terms of “ethnicities.” As a matter of fact, there were ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, even ethnic arabs and Jews who took part in the Maidan. Ukraine is a far more diverse country than the media lets on. It is more accurate to say that most Ukrainians, of whatever ethnicity, support a united Ukraine, even in the East and South, as polls have shown. These people who don’t you will likely find either at the bottom of society, or are communists and other weirdos, who can be bought or persuaded to support the Kremlin by Russian GRU. The Kremlin has likely planned this operation for years, by the way, with lots of agents in place they planned to activate in the event that Ukraine shook off their hold and gravitated to the west.