Problem it not a vote for Independence for those that do not want to be part of Kiev. It is a vote to be absorbed by Russia. There is not one remaining Ukrainian Oblast the is majority Russian ethnicity.
I think if the idiots who negotiated the Budapest Memorandum would have returned Crimea to Russia in exchange for Ukraine keeping their nukes, it would have avoided a lot of trouble down the road.
But that’s what you got with Clinton, the man who broke up Yugoslavia.