Ukraine elected a new President. We were there as International Election Monitors, to observe whether the elections were free, fair and transparent. There were a total of close to 3,000 observers; about 500 were from UCCA and CKY.

The first step was a full day of training, covering elections laws and regulations, as well as basics in what to looks for, how to act and make a difference. Here, Federal Judge Bohdan Futej addresses a few hundred of us.

Here’s some of the CYM members that were part of the group…

We were deployed to many cities and towns throughout Ukraine. My group went to Zhytomyr Oblast, about a hundred miles from Kyiv.

When we arrived at the Oblast capital on Saturday, the day before elections, we ran into a small patriotic gathering in the center of town.

The ballot was loooooooong. It had to be, with 21 candidates for President…

[click photo to enlarge]

We were up at 5, arrived at our first polling station at 7am, in time for the required Precinct Elections Committee meeting at 7:15. Voting started at 8am, and lasted until 8pm. In the span of the day, we visited a half dozen polling stations in three cities – Zhytomyr, Korostyshiv and Malyn.

We met an awful lot of interesting people, all of whom took the time to speak to us with kindness and enthusiasm for the election. The resounding thought throughout the day on the part of voters and elections officials (many of whom were teachers and other school workers) was that “finally we have lived to see an election in Ukraine that we can trust!”.

Our last stop was just before the polls closed at 8pm. We settled in for what would turn out to be many hours of vote counting in the district. The folks who ran the elections in the local district had been working for several days leading up to the vote. Today they were up from before 7am, and would be locked in the counting room until well past midnight until the counts were done. Many checks and cross-checks were required to make sure that mistakes hadn’t crept in. Despite the chaotic nature of the process in this particular polling station, I was struck by how incredibly dedicated the members of the commission were. I had seen a high level of commitment pride throughout that day.

Preliminary results show it to be a big win for Poroshenko. I pray that it is a big win for the Ukrainian nation as well. They deserve peace and freedom.

P.S. Here’s what Geoffrey Pyatt, our U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, had to say to us at a reception at his residence: