In 2014, most regions in the East and South of Ukraine had referendums to be independent and join Russia. The biggest were Donetsk and Lughansk. What we heard at the time was that they asked Moscow to accept them into Russia as they accepted Crimea. However, we read from TASS in May of 2014 that Moscow had not received any requests which was not true. It seemed Russia wanted to keep Ukraine unified. Russia did not have its super weapons yet and Putin's advisor did not want a confrontation with NATO at the time.