When the government controls all the power, including judicial system, refuses to acknowledge peaceful demonstrations for months, and then swiftly passes the law which pretty much outlaws protest (including, by the way, over the internet), how exactly are you going to arrange that "open transparent referendum" you are talking about?
I'm sorry that there is not enough angelic protesters in Ukraine to conform to your high standards. Not only that, but apparently Ukrainians don't even qualify as "normal people", since no matter how many times we look at Syria it doesn't become obvious that the "better solution" is to yield to the government and abandon our constitutional rights.
You can find tons of alternative views, with little effort. But let me save you some time and present the brief summary here: the protesters are, in fact, not all white knights.
Moreover, it is by now rather clear that they don't all smell like roses and talk like fairies. More than one breach of gentlemanly conduct have been reported by independent sources, and I think it is now safe to say that each and every of them has some kind of agenda and personal goals.
Now what? Does it mean that they have no right to protest? Or that they should stop fighting and go home until they reach perfect enlightenment? What does being or not being white knights have to do with the matter?
That's a great idea! In addition, we could also put good guys in charge of everything, and send bad guys to the jail. Also, raise salaries and lower prices.
I sense the solution to the Ukrainian crisis is starting to shape!
Who talks about wealth? Where did you get the idea that people in Ukraine expect to get wealthy by burning tires? Or do you simply need a straw man to express your wisdom?
When the peaceful protests started in November, the main motive had at least something to do with economics (association with EU). Nowadays it's totally different. By taking a number of violent actions and unconstitutional moves, the government took this up to a completely another level. It is no longer about trade laws, but about basic human rights and the total corruption of power. We know that the economical situation will suffer, but we are prepared for it.
Ukrainians got burned enough with revolution in 2004, and we had lost our fair share of illusions. So there had to be a very good reason for us to try it again. And this government managed to provoke it.
People who never had to protect their constitutional freedoms or human rights against a real, brutal, force, who were simply lucky enough to be born in places with long and established traditions of democracy (something their ancestors actually did have to struggle for), smugly judging people who risk their lives standing up for their values in place where human rights meant nothing for centuries.
"OMG people are so easy to manipulate", "This smoke is damn unpleasant, is it really necessary?", "Can't they just talk to each other like normal people"...
The Telegram guys chose to view it as a proof of inherent superiority of humble Russian programmers over NSA-backed American haters (I wish I was kidding!).
Here is what Pavel Durov had to say on the matter (translated from his public post on vk.com http://vk.com/wall-52630202_7858):
> This story makes me once again admire Russian programmers. For a whole week esteemed American cryptographers on HackerNews were picking on the protocol fruitlessly - mostly demanding to replace our own solution with algorithms from NSA-backed Suite B [sic!]. An yet a Russian programmer, who calls himself "a novice", could immediately recognize the weak spot in the secret chats, in the context of an article on Habrahabr.ru.
Edit: To make it clear, that is not the whole post, just the first paragraph relevant to my point
So, xiadzpl, don't hold your breath. [2]
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lviv#History
2. http://http2.github.io/http2-spec/#GTFO