As part of a team assembled by the National Democratic Institute, I observed the May 25 election in Kherson, the oblast just north of Crimea.  Kherson had been the target of attempts by Russian special forces to subvert the Ukrainian government and derail the presidential election, as they were doing in Donetsk and Luhansk.  The Russian attempts in Kherson failed—an indication that something unusual was happening in southern Ukraine.

Kherson had been predictably eastern-looking since Ukraine’s independence in 1991.  In presidential elections in 2004 and 2010, this overwhelmingly Russian-speaking province had supported Victor Yanukovych, the now disgraced president who fled to Russia last February.  In the 2012 parliamentary elections, Yanukovych’s Party of Regions came in first in Kherson, followed by the Communist Party. 

Based on this record, the Russians must have figured that they would be able to succeed in taking over Kherson as they had in Crimea and were attempting to do in Donetsk and Luhansk.  But not so.  When the Russian special forces attempted to infiltrate the province in April, the Khersonians drove them back into Crimea.

When our election observation team arrived in Kherson -- we flew to Odessa, the scene of bloody unrest a week earlier, and then drove three hours east through Mykolayiv, also the scene of tension -- the first thing we noticed was that the statue of Lenin was gone from the central square in front of the governor’s office and across from our hotel.  In its place was a quickly constructed flagpole flying the blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine.  The base had been decorated with traditional Ukrainian red-on-white embroidery and a hastily prepared plaque remembering the “Heavenly Hundred” who died on the Maidan in Kyiv in February. 

Driving around the city over the next two days, we were amazed at the demonstrations of patriotism -- Ukrainian flags hanging from apartment windows, displayed on cars, on lamp posts, adorning government buildings; blue-and-yellow ribbons in girls’ hair; blue-and-yellow nail polish on fingers and toes; blue-and-yellow shoe laces. 

On Saturday evening before the Sunday vote, in that same square next to the new flagpole, girls in national dress performed traditional dance, men unfurled an enormous Ukrainian flag with “Ukraine United” printed on it.  Most wore the traditional vyshyvanka, embroidered shirts most often seen in western Ukraine, rarely in the east or south.

On Sunday we, along with thousands of Ukrainian and other international observers, monitored the elections.  We visited party headquarters, met with oblast and local officials, and observed the voting in 14 polling places.  The prevailing attitude was upbeat.  Whereas in past elections, candidates traded charges of vote buying, carousel voting, ballot stuffing and corrupt election officials, this year there were no such allegations.  The voting was well organized and efficient; when we visited our interpreter’s polling place, he finished voting more quickly than we international observers could get registered. 

The vote counting, which lasted well past midnight, followed amazingly rigorous protocols that ensured accurate and transparent tallies and instilled confidence in the candidates’ observers.  This turned out to be the best, cleanest, fairest elections in Ukrainian history.

At each polling place, representatives of each presidential candidate sat watching the proceedings.  All were eager to tell us about their feelings and attitudes on issues that mattered to them—Moscow’s annexation of Crimea to their immediate south, Russian aggression to their east, their distant capital to the north.  Their comments were diverse and complex—and in the end encouraging. Many had friends and relatives in Crimea.  While most people we talked to in Kherson wanted Crimea to once again be part of Ukraine, they also recognized that it would take time, time needed mainly for economic conditions in Ukraine to improve, attracting the Crimeans back.  But, surprisingly, there was little outrage at the illegal annexation.

Attitudes toward Russia were complex.  The director of one polling place -- Alexander, who had spent 13 years in Kamchatka in the Soviet navy but proudly wore an elaborate white vyshyvanka with black embroidery -- described an attack the night before on a school building that housed three polling places, one of which was his.  Russian-backed separatists threw Molotov cocktails at the entrance, causing little damage -- so little that the repairs including repainting were completed by the time the voting started at 8 am. 

Alexander was privately supporting the leading pro-Europe candidate.  Many observers applauded the tearing down of the town’s large statue of Lenin, but a couple described it as vandalism.  Several thought it should have been moved into a museum rather than destroyed.

Most Khersonians I talked to felt estranged from the central government in Kyiv. They complained that the governments in Kyiv have always ignored their region.  They wanted to be free to use their Russian language in official business as well as daily life.   Rinat Akhmetov told me the same thing the next day in his office in Kyiv.  (While nearly all conversations in the polling place where we observed the late-night ballot-counting took place in Russian, the very competent deputy chairman, herself a Russian speaker,  insisted that all signatures on the tally protocols be signed in Ukrainian -- ”it’s our official state language,” she said.)

Despite this alienation from Kyiv, Poroshenko, running on an explicitly pro-European platform, took 49 percent of the votes in this previously Russia-leaning oblast, almost the same as the more than 50 percent he captured across the country.  (The two far-right parties got less than 2 percent between them.)

The theme that pervaded the city was support for a united Ukraine, certainly including Donbas but eventually including Crimea.  This unabashed patriotism in this unlikely part of the country is confirmation of the sense in Kyiv that there is a new Ukraine emerging from the turmoil of the Maidan.  There is a new spirit of accountability, reform, unity and independence. 

In this spirit, the presidential elections were free and fair, even if some of the mayoral and city council elections saw some of the old practices.  The Russians and their iconic Lenin statues are being rejected, even in the south and east.  My Ukrainian colleague, Tanya Bohdanova, noted proudly that, beyond voting for president, the vote last Sunday was a vote for a united Ukraine.

William B. Taylor is USIP’s vice president for the Middle East and Africa. He served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009.