There has been a lot of Russian, Crimean and Ukranian history posted these past few months, all of it well sourced. There's been a lot of rhetoric about how a coup is a legal government and a vote is illegal, but nothing of substance that supports Crimea and some other eastern areas being governed by a violent coup in Kiev.
The more I read about the basket case Ukraine, the more it makes sense to split the marriage-of-convenience of the two entitities that made up Ukraine.