May 25, 2014: "The Most Important Election"

In spite of the State Department's request that American citizens "defer all travel" to Odesa, our observer mission still sent us there. Things had been quiet since the Trade Unions fire, so we figured there was a good chance that everything would be OK. Still, rumors were flying about the possibilities of further violence brought in by Russians from Transnistria (the portion of Moldova under control by Russian separatists, whose border is nearby), and I was on edge enough that I felt it safer not to tell many people that I was going there until after I had already returned.

So after the orientation for observers, we took an overnight train from Kyiv. Arriving too early to check into our hotel, we were given a tour around the city.

Odesa has the feel of a port city, laid-back and breezy. Its wide boulevards are lined with tall trees, evoking the feel of Paris or New Orleans. The architecture is diverse; art nouveau, gothic, and rococo facades are sprinkled throughout the city.

Following the annexation of Crimea, Odesa is now Ukraine's main port city.

Odesa's famous opera house

Signs of patriotism, while harder to find in Odesa than in L'viv or Kyiv, were there all the same.

A statue of Catherine the Great, the city's founder. This statue is just down the street from the famous Potemkin steps-- which I did not photograph on this visit, as I had taken a photo on my last visit.

This sculpture was gifted to the city of Odesa by Kyivstar, one of Ukraine's largest mobile phone carriers.

 Among the sites we visited was the place where the first protester was killed at the end of April. 

The shooting actually occurred further down the street. They had dragged him back to this corner to wait for an ambulance when he died.

Until that point, Odesa had remained immune to the violence that had occurred elsewhere in Ukraine, in spite of the substantial pro-Russian sentiment in the city. On that day 40 people died, but it is still unclear exactly how it happened. I've heard conflicting reports. The Kyiv Post said that a Pro-Ukrainian march to the soccer stadium ahead of a game was attacked by the separatists, who were then driven back to the trade unions building. A friend who claims to have known one of the participants, though, said that the fans at the soccer game were riled into becoming a mob and going to attack the separatists. Whatever the truth may be, there was a clash, and molotov cocktails thrown between the two forces ignited the building and killed those inside. The tragedy shook the city to its very core.

There was certainly a tension in the air leading up to the elections. Fortunately, our pre-election visits to local polling locations revealed no major issues, except one precinct where the head of the election committee would not let us in.

We were told upon arriving in Odesa that there was actually little concern about the Presidential election-- it was the mayoral race which was hotly contested. That said, it was technically not within our purview to comment on the mayoral elections-- our job was only to observe the presidential contest.

Aside from the polling location where we started and ended the day (the same place where the head would not let us in the day before), we by and large witnessed few major irregularities. The overriding sentiment in the precincts seemed to be one of joy and optimism. It was so touching to receive genuine words of gratitude from voters, commission members, and local observers alike. One old man who had come to vote and saw me standing behind the table said, "I'm happy to see you." Others expressed that it was important that we were here, especially this time. Everyone seemed to understand that this was a decisive moment for the country. An election not considered to be free and fair would give Putin a pretext for invasion, an outcome which nobody wanted.

It was a long day, which began at 7:45 (the polls were to open at 8:00 am) (although ours did not actually open until 8:35) and did not end until we returned to the hotel at 6:30 the next morning. By Ukrainian law, once the polling station has been closed to voters, the building is to be locked and no one is to leave or enter until all the ballots have been counted. We actually ended up leaving early because there were so many problems at our polling station we weren't sure they were going to finish anytime soon. We did, at least, stay until the presidential votes were tallied. In our precinct Poroshenko won by a wide margin, and Dmitry Yarosh, the leader of "Right Sector", the far-right group that Putin has been maligning, received only six votes. These results seemed to pretty accurately reflect the results nationwide.

Because of the sensitive nature of the things that I witnessed, I will speak in general terms about Ukrainian election law, the things we looked for, and what types of problems we encountered. I will be including a mixture of pictures from various precincts. If you want to know more about my experience, please ask me in person.

Each precinct was to have one of these signs outside of the polling location, clearly marking it as a voting location. Many were in schools, often two or three in the same school.

Each precinct was also required to have a Ukrainian flag by the entrance.

As our precinct opened late, there was a line of disgruntled voters waiting in the hallway.

The pink ballots were for the mayoral election, the purple ones for the presidential. Both were cast simultaneously.

A Ukrainian passport was the only valid form of identification to receive a ballot. Part of our job was to watch and make sure people weren't being given ballots without first presenting a Ukrainian passport.

Once the passport had been checked, the name of the voter was found on the voter list and the voter signed beside it to indicate that they had received a ballot.

The other international observers on my team :)

Typically there were several other observers already at the location, from the local press and from other international organizations.

At each precinct, we asked to see the safe in which the ballots were held. There were not supposed to be any ballots in the safe after the polls had opened.

This precinct had followed the rules. There were some precincts we encountered, however, where some ballots still remained in the safe, which is a violation of election law.

The ballot boxes were to be placed in a central location, visible to everyone in the room, to prevent tampering. They were to be sealed on both sides, either with the plastic purple ties shown here, or with a piece of paper signed and stamped by the commission and glued across the seam.

Posters with the information for all twenty-one candidates were to be hung in clear view for the examination of all voters. We encountered a few precincts, though, where a couple of the posters were mysteriously missing (or had been vandalized)

The mobile ballot boxes are for people who are physically unable to come to the polls. They are brought around to the voters' homes. Technically, once they have been brought back to the precinct they are supposed to be turned upside down and stored in plain view so that no one can put extra ballots inside.

As I stated earlier, by and large we did not witness many big violations. Still, at least two out of the sixteen precincts we visited that day did have some issues. These, however, were mostly relating to the mayoral election and not the presidential. By the time we returned to the hotel at 6:30 the next morning, Petro Poroshenko had already been declared the winner of the presidential race through exit polling.

I slept for five or six hours after our return. Our train back to Kyiv was not until the late evening. Unfortunately, I was feeling seriously unwell after my multiple short nights. Fortunately, I was able to request a late checkout from the hotel and remain in my room lying down for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, this meant I didn't get any more time to explore Odesa. No worries, though-- I am sure I will be back someday.

The Maidan is Still Here

My apartment in Kyiv was situated on Volodymyrs'ka Street, tucked away behind St. Sofia's Cathedral.

I captured this stunning view of St. Sofia's at sunset

Wandering around this part of town, I was surprised to see how little had changed. Reading all of the news reports and watching all of the live videos from Kyiv had made it seem like half the city had been destroyed. My first hint that things were different was the medical tent which was still pitched in front of St. Michael's monastery.

The tent is at the bottom-left, with the Ukrainian flag on top. The first night that the police beat protesters, they fled and were given sanctuary in this monastery. Monks gave them tea, medical care, and a warm place to rest, and prayed over them, while locking out the riot police.

It was surprising, indeed, when the woman in the produkti where I stopped for a bottle of water addressed me in Ukrainian and not in Russian. But it would not be until that evening, when I went down to the Khreshchatyk, Kyiv's main boulevard, that I was again surprised to see just how much had changed.

Shevchenko's 200th birthday poster appears many places down the street.

Shevchenko's stern countenance also stares out from the Rada building, where protesters set up camp for months during the winter. The spray-painted label of "Revolution Headquarters" has now been painted out. The white sign says that the Rada building is closed for renovation and repairs, and apologizes for any inconvenience.

Army tents are still set up in the middle of the street; men in fatigues wander between them. They hang with signs describing the group which lives inside: many are from regions like Vinnytsia, Luhansk or Crimea, while others carry the party logos of far-right groups like Pravy Sektor and Spilna Sprava.

The tent from Vinnytsia

The Maidan itself is unrecognizable from my previous visit. The burnt-out husk of the Trade Unions building towers over everything as a somber reminder of the violence which has occurred here. Its charred facade has been sprinkled with blots of pink paint, which seem to glow like sparks in the twilight.

The last time I returned to the Maidan, after these pictures were taken, one side of the Trade Unions Building had been covered by a screen showing the iconic Ukrainian landscape of golden wheat under a blue sky, with the words, "Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes"

Some barricades still remain, made of tires, cobblestones, and debris.

The base of Hrushevskoho Street, where the first protesters were killed after the passage of repressive anti-protest laws in January.

This sign says, "25 May [the date of the election] your voice is crucial- time to live anew"

You can also see where Maidan activists tore up the cobblestones to build the barricades and for use as weapons against the riot police. In some of these spaces there are stacks of new bricks waiting to be lain, but as yet they are still unrepaired.

The above reads "A united country"

And rising up through the center of it all, the "yolka"--the Christmas tree which was never fully assembled, which became the beacon for the protests.

"It all started with this yolka," my friend Halya tells me, "because the government wanted to put it up, but the students would not allow them to do it." As the protests went on, the yolka became covered with flags and banners rather than evergreen boughs.

These say "Everyone together against Putin" and "We love Russians, we despise Putin"

The message of the Maidan has changed; now that Yanukovych is gone, focus has shifted to the violence in the East of the country and Russia's role in it. Anti-Russia sentiment is much more apparent than before. More Ukrainian is being spoken in Kyiv than before. Though things are quiet here now, this was the place where the first blood was spilled, where a hundred protesters were shot by government snipers just days before Yanukovych fled and Russian troops invaded Crimea.

I walked with Halya up to Instituts'ka street, where most of the deaths occurred.

It is difficult to capture this experience in words, because the wounds are still so raw. The barricades are still here, layer on layer of them. Memorials line the street on either side, covered with mounds of flowers, candles, and pictures of the dead. Some of them were quite young-- we stopped at the memorial of a man who was only 18 years old. Friends and family stand mourning before them. Pointing, Halya shows me where the snipers were standing-- on top of Hotel Ukrainia, where I stayed in 2012 before observing the Parliamentary elections. Then she shows me a metal lamppost with bullet holes in it. "The men were carrying wooden shields," she says, "it could not protect them from bullets like this. Or their helmets." They are heroes, she says. She is sure they are in heaven now.

The people who remain on the Maidan these days, however, have ambiguous significance. They claim that they needed to stay in place until the election in order to ensure that all of the demands of the Maidan were fully carried out in accordance with the wishes of the people. But, several Ukrainians told me, the people there now are not really representatives of the people. "They should go home now," my friend Halya tells me, "Go home to their families, go back to work. We got what we wanted. There is no need for them to be here any more. They are just lazy. They sit here all day and drink. And then people come to the Maidan and see them, and they say 'Oh, the people on Maidan were just a bunch of lazy drunks.' They say they are heroes, but if they were really heroes, they would be going to the east." Whether it is really laziness or Post-Traumatic Stress, it's hard to say. But it is certainly clear that these men (because they are mostly men) do plan to stay here for a while.

Klitschko, the new mayor-elect, last week called for the square to be cleared. Now he has retracted that call. It will be interesting to see what happens with this space in the future.

"European Square" at the end of Khreshchatyk. The sign reads "A United Country" in both Ukrainian and in Russian.

In Which I Fail to Enter a War Zone

I am admittedly late in beginning this section of my blog, and there are a score of adventures from last year still missing, but I will skip ahead to the present trip in the spirit of relevance.

For a country that some claim is “on the edge of civil war,” all Ukraine has thus far shown to me is the same peace and hospitality as ever before. Men may be fighting and dying in Luhansk and Donetsk, but everywhere that I have been has betrayed no hint of this violence. That said, some things have certainly changed in the eleven months since I was last here.

A patriotic slogan, "Glory to Ukraine!" spray-painted on the crumbling ruins of a building in Stryis'kiy Park. I was to see much more similar graffiti during my time in Ukraine.

L’viv is an eternal city, like Rome or Paris. It wears its age like a crown of flowers on its head. It is perhaps the most under-appreciated gem of a city in the world. The analysts who fear that all of Ukraine may descend into chaos on a moment's notice have obviously never visited this wondrous place.

Here, mere hours from the Polish border, life goes on as usual. Crumbling Austrian facades tower over quiet streetside cafes. There is music, laughter, and life. The only remaining sign of the recent tragedy is a poster in front of the main government building in Rynok Square, honoring the "Heavenly Hundred" who were killed in clashes against Yanukovych's government in February. More of the dead came from L'viv than from any other city. And while hints of mourning still appear now and then, it is apparent that most L'viv residents understand that the country's struggles are not over. At the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church service I attended on Sunday, all of the intentions were offered for Ukraine's Crimean Tatars, who have been forced off their land and threatened-- again-- by the Russians.

I know that in America right now, one is hard pressed to find a picture of Ukraine that does not include men with guns. So here are several that I took on a Sunday stroll through Stryi'ski Park.

 

...and from a foray into the city center by the Opera House.

And yes, even in the midst of all this peace and beauty, there are still reminders.