Because autonomy is what they voted for.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/11/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA400LI20140511
It's also worth noting that Putin tried to get them to postpone that vote.
http://news.yahoo.com/putin-postpone-east-ukraine-vote-autonomy-140218512.html
So, who is the real enemy of self rule?
Organizers in the main region holding the makeshift vote on Sunday said nearly 90 percent had voted in favor.
Well before polls closed, one separatist leader said the region would form its own state bodies and military after the referendum, formalizing a split that began with the armed takeover of state buildings in a dozen eastern towns last month.
Another said the vote simply showed that the East wanted to decide its own fate, whether in Ukraine, on its own, or as part of Russia.
"Eighty-nine percent, that's it," the head of the separatist electoral commission in Donetsk, Roman Lyagin, said by telephone when asked for the result of a vote that the pro-Western Ukrainian government in Kiev has condemned as illegal.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/11/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA400LI20140511
It's also worth noting that Putin tried to get them to postpone that vote.
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged that a planned May 11 referendum on autonomy in southeast Ukraine be postponed.
In a Wednesday meeting with Swiss president Didier Burkhalter, Putin also called on Ukraine's military to halt all operations against pro-Russia activists who have seized government buildings and police stations across at least a dozen towns in eastern Ukraine.
The Russian leader described Ukraine's upcoming presidential election — slated for May 25 — as a move "in the right direction,"
http://news.yahoo.com/putin-postpone-east-ukraine-vote-autonomy-140218512.html
So, who is the real enemy of self rule?