BTW, it has now been pretty much established that they never counted the ballots in Donetsk. Or, at the very least, that the results announced were not based on any count. Basically, the official announced results were achieved by multiplying announced turnout by some percentages rounded to a hundredth of a percentage points. I.e., they first had the percentages and used them to calculate absolute vote numbers and not the other way around.
Yes, I'm sure that all the regular anti-Russia sources at your fingertips (like the BBC/NPR/CNN) will tell you that this election "wasn't fair," because they don't like the winners. Luckily, Novorossiya does not care in slightest what they think. Novorossiya does not need Western "friends" when it has real friends in the BRICS countries.
As if any country other than Russia and its other Bantustans will ever recognize Novorossiya as a real country, let alone be friends to it.
Personally, I think the main reason that Putin is bothering with Novorossiya is that he felt the need for a confrontation with the West as an excuse for what's going to happen to the Russian economy now that oil prices are collapsing. Otherwise, I think he would have been satisfied with slicing off the Crimea, as that was something he probably could have achieved without causing a long term disruption.
