Have spent last week in Russia.
The bulk of the population, and indeed daily extensive television features, are convinced that Malaysian was shot down by an air-air missile fired from a Ukrainian fighter, to embarrass the Russian side and stick it on them when it became known the rebels had stolen the SAMs from the Ukrainian military. As a result they cannot understand the sanctions imposed by the EU/West and consider them some sort of spite for support for Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
The population in these areas are mainly Russian (in Crimea almost entirely, it was Russian until 1960), a hangover from the breakup of the Soviet Union when there were no relevant divisions as such. Various independent former Soviet countries have taken a series of measures in recent years aimed at sheer nastiness against their Russian-background minority populations, this being good vote-catching territory for the locals (look up "Latvian Stateless persons" for example), and the Russian government has come in for much stick about not supporting them more; they have of course many relatives etc back in Russia, and were just living on the wrong side of a ine when the Soviet breakup happened.
The Russians and the Ukrainians are both just about the largest trading partners with each other, there are considerable links and you still see Ukrainian 737s at all the main Russian airports.