If you’re wanting to alarm the Kiev backers, you’re missing the bigger point: Novorussia isn’t the Donbas! It’s Tsarov’s own region of all of Southern Ukraine, including Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Zaporizhia Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, Kherson Oblast, Odessa Oblast (and Crimea and Donetsk). You and I certainly differ about whether the Donetsk elections legitimately represent Donetsk self-rule, but I’m highly dubious that some of the southern oblasts want to leave the Ukraine. If there’s anywhere near a level of support that makes the suggestion plausible, Kiev has screwed the pooch so hard it isn’t funny.
Those are all predominantly Russian speaking oblasts of Ukraine. If they ever do agree to federate with Donetsk and Lugansk, it could be a new country of 30-35 million people with the rest in a Ukrainian-speaking rump Ukrainian state.