Precarious as the situation in Ukraine may be for its citizens, switching one's country is a little more complicated than, say, switching laundry detergents. You would have to transition to--literally--a foreign country and culture, with different laws and systems. For many ethnic Ukrainians, at the most all they would have in common with Russia might be their primary language. So it's silly to think that people would desire to change countries willy-nilly simply because things are rough. And to think that such a decision could be made within a matter of weeks is ludicrous.
I mentioned Putin in my post because he is the leader of Russia and clearly saw something to gain in Russia's interests in the annexation of Crimea (hence why he accepted Crimea into the Russian federation), and would likewise seem something to gain in any annexation of portions of mainland Ukraine. As it relates to Russia, the buck stops with him.
Now that is a totally different question than what is going on in the streets of Eastern Ukrainian cities. Could there be a grassroots element to at least some of those out there? Sure. I'm sure you do have ethnic Russians living in Ukraine who are participating in it. However, by all the looks of it, it's moved past the simple "people power" protest movement and transitioned into a full fledged paramilitary movement (far beyond what we saw on Maidan), and at that point you do have to wonder how much support these people are getting from those just across the border.
And frankly it's just silly for you to reject so cavalierly the idea that these militia men may be receiving material support from a country literally just a few miles away that shares a direct border, and yet in the same breath claim that the US State Department was pulling all the strings thousands of miles away at the Maidan protests to the point where the interim government was installed by them and for them. As if the Maidan protests were none of the "genuine, grass roots people power movement" that you claim these masked camo wearing, AK-47 welding men to be.
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