Crimea’s Deputy PM has already said Russia’s “second step” will be to seize eastern Ukraine.
Via Boston Globe:
Secessionist fever spread across eastern Ukraine Sunday as the Crimean peninsula overwhelmingly approved a referendum to rejoin Russia and ethnic-Russian protesters across a wide swath of the increasingly divided country demanded a similar secession vote in their own regions.
Chanting “Rossiya, Rossiya” and “Putin, Putin,” thousands of protesters took to the streets and stormed government buildings in the major frontier cities of Donetsk and Kharkiv, even as the United States condemned the Crimea vote as illegal and the threat of sanctions by the West loomed over Moscow.
The Russian government-run RIA-Novosti news agency quoted exit polls that showed 93 percent of voters had supported the referendum in Crimea, a strategic peninsula that is home to the Russian Black Sea fleet. Another state-run news agency, Interfax, said turnout had been 80 percent in Crimea, which was part of Russia until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to Ukraine in 1954.
The Ukrainian government, installed last month after street protests drove out the pro-Moscow president, dismissed the Crimea vote as a “circus” held at gunpoint, in a reference to the thousands of Russian troops occupying Crimea.