Just over a year has passed since the Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow, the Russian spiritual leader and ally of President Vladimir Putin, went to Istanbul to make one final attempt to dissuade another Orthodox prelate, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, from recognising an independent church in Ukraine. The country’s leaders had appealed to Bartholomew many times for the re-establishment of an autonomous church to buttress Ukraine’s fragile sense of sovereignty after the Russian-backed rebellion in the east and invasion of Crimea in 2014. According to a leaked transcript, the visitor argued that Russians and Ukrainians were a single people, and that Ukraine’s government was illegitimate. Seeing that that their host, who enjoys “primacy of honour” in the Orthodox world, disagreed, the Russians left angrily.
The Economist: Taking sides in the Orthodox Church’s battles over Russia and Ukraine
The head of the new Ukrainian national Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Epifaniy prays for the killed in Ilovaisk Ukrainian soldiers as he attends a commemoration ceremony at Mikhailivska square on Aug. 29, 2019.
