Brian Cooper

Kiev’s renewed political crisis, unresolved confrontation with Donetsk and Luhansk separatist regions, and ongoing Kiev-Moscow tensions, have brought fresh divisions to Ukraine’s separated Orthodox community.

Bitter ecclesiastical history and post-Soviet turmoil gave independent Ukraine three separate Orthodox bodies: the Ukraine Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate [UOCMP], canonically aligned with Russian Orthodoxy and sole church recognised by Ecumenical Patriarch; the fiercely nationalist Ukraine Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate [UOC-KP] under breakaway Metropolitan Filaret; and post-Tsarist Ukraine Autocephalous Orthodox Church [UAOC].

Deep divisions over three decades - sometimes flaring into local violence - made more complex by rivalry with western Ukraine’s Catholic and pro-Rome ‘Greek Catholic’ churches, are being re-assessed under the impact of geopolitical forces.

With 1,000 parishes in predominantly anti-Russian western Ukraine, UAOC under primate Macarius is questioning erstwhile good relations with pro-Russian UOC-MP, seeking closer ties with strongly anti-Moscow UOC-KP - which claims onefifth of Ukrainians as adherents - and even raising possible union.

UOC-MP, traditionally the major expression of Ukrainian Orthodoxy with 11,000 priests, 186 monasteries and 90 per cent of south and east Ukraine’s churches, has been weakened by 2014’s mass exodus of proRussian Ukrainians to Russia, accusations of being politically pro-Russian, and parish-level intimidation by UOC-KP elements.

Nationalist elements within UOC-MP urge its breakaway from the Moscow Patriarchate, even the formation of a new United Ukrainian Orthodox Church, while others back Metropolitan Onuphrius’ ‘softly, softly’ reconciling stance between Moscow and Kiev. Russian Orthodoxy, which traces its origins to the Baptism of Prince-Saint Vladimir of KievRus in 985 AD, would see its influence in global Orthodoxy damaged by the loss of its Ukraine sister church. To avoid antagonising Orthodox opinion in Ukraine, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has been muted in support of Putin’s Ukraine policy.

In the separatist east, Russian volunteer fighters of the selfstyled ‘Russian Orthodox Army’ with a bizarre ideology of ‘Tsarist imperialism’, further complicate religio-political dynamics.

Spring 2016 sees the 21st Century’s first Ecumenical Council of Orthodox Churches in Istanbul under Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew - but is deemed unlikely to solve Ukrainian Orthodoxy’s divisions, or even attempt to do so.

Ukraine’s minority Baptist, Pentecostal and Adventist churches struggle to uphold the evangelical identity amid pressures to align Ukrainian nationalism with Orthodoxy. Unconfirmed reports claim some of their churches in separatist regions have been forcibly closed by Orthodox priests.