Actually, those evil separatists who, as some people here claim, prevent us from learning the opinion of Eastern Ukraine, started by organizing a referendum to ask for the opinion of people of Eastern Ukraine. And they did invite whatever observers wished to attend. Of course, we'll never know what the real results of that referendum would be since Kiev government did everything up to and including use of military force to prevent that referendum from ever happening, and all European countries conveniently ignored the event and didn't send any observers at all.
But of course it's the fault of Russia and evil East-Ukrainian separatists that we cannot now know the true opinion of people of East Ukraine. I see the logic... not. :-)
The part begs to stop the ceasefire and start liberating it from Russian invaders and local collaborating gangs
Sure, and of course the "anti-terrorist force" enjoys the support of local population with all associated benefits, like all enemy troop movements being transparent for them in near-realtime? Except it seems that it's the separatists who are perfectly well-informed about Kiev troops' movements. I wonder why...
I'm reasonably sure that 70% of Eastern Ukraine think of themselves as Russians...
Actually, much less as far as I'm aware. At least according to relatively recent polls (don't remember the years though - 2012? 2013?). Of course that's pretty situational: when USSR disintegrated, number of self-proclaimed Russians in Eastern Ukraine instantly dropped by something like 30% of total population. It suddenly became a trend to consider themselves Ukrainians - and many people did exactly that.
Right now though, they probably want the fighting to stop.
That's for sure, the difference in opinion between Kiev and Donetsk/Lugansk is
how.
Also, we've heard of lots of refugees crossing the Russian border, what about the other direction, west into Ukraine?
According to Kiev, there are no refugees in Ukraine. At least that was the stated reason for their refusal of humanitarian aid from Russia. :-)
Actually, we do know what Eastern Ukraine wants, Pew did polling on this very subject.
As the article clearly states, that was before the violence in Odessa and Mariupol, which changed the opinions a lot and contributed to the shift in demands from "autonomy" to "secession".