If there where so many why didn't they come out?
Maybe they are afraid? Plenty of frustrated, trigger-happy Ukrainian paramilitary nutcases are roaming the streets of Mariupol these days you know.
Did you pull that out of your own ass? Or out of Putin's ass?
How about giving people chance to decide? Referendum was request from the very beginning (there was one, but it was held in everything but regular conditions tbh). However, Kiev has been refusing even to think about it, and this denial is one of the key causes for what today looks more and more like a wide-scale civil war.
That was probably because by the time referendum was even brought up, Russia has spent so much time spreading sensationalist and fear-mongering propaganda around Ukraine that any referendum would no longer have been objective, and based entirely on lies. Remember that stuff about protesters in Maidan being mostly Right Sector? Or that Ukraine supports Right Sector and will elect Nazis to government? (when in actuality Nazis got less than 2% support) Russia even tried to hack Ukrainian voting machines to make Right Sector president win the election, with the virus thankfully discovered and stopped before elections took place, but since the IT people did not tell anyone about finding the virus, Russia accidentally reported that Right Sector won, by the exact amount the virus was going to make him win, and were caught put publicly.
So, sure, Kiev denying the referendum may have been one of the key causes, but Russian propaganda and lies was THE key cause that started it all.