Last year, on September 15, 2018, Metropolitan Ilarion, chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church’s External Relations Department, in an interview with RT television said: “If the [Moscow Patriarchate] recognizes the Church as an aggressor, if it is deprived of legal rights, then we can expect everything: that the schismatics will take control of the great monasteries such as the Kyiv-Pecherska Lavra, the Pochayiv Lavra. Then, of course, the Orthodox believers will protect these holy places and bloodshed could follow.”
This came after Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew announced on September 7, 2018, that he would be sending two envoy bishops (Archbishop Daniel of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A. and Bishop Andrij of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada) to Ukraine in a move that the Russian Orthodox Church criticized as a step toward Constantinople declaring ecclesiastical independence for an Orthodox Church of Ukraine. A third bishop, Metropolitan Emannuel of France of the Greek Orthodox Church, was later added as a third exarch by Patriarch Bartholomew.
In response, the ROC’s Holy Synod, which opened its meeting on September 14, 2018, announced that it would no longer take part in structures chaired by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the ROC’s primate, Patriarch Kirill, criticized Patriarch Bartholomew’s decision. ROC representatives continued to express concern that an independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, in a break from Russia’s orbit, could lead to violence.
Some ROC officials said the breakdown in relations was the equivalent of a diplomatic spat in the severing of relations.
The Kremlin said it was following the situation closely and reiterated its opposition to any split in Orthodoxy. “Of course, for Moscow and indeed for the entire Orthodox world the single preferable scenario is the preservation of unity of this Orthodox world,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Analysts saw the move by Patriarch Bartholomew as a clear rejection of Moscow’s claims to Ukraine as its “canonical territory” and it remained unclear how Moscow would respond.
Thus far, the ROC’s response has been restrained helplessness as there is nothing that will change the course the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ecumenical Patriarchate have chosen and finalized in the Tomos of autocephaly presented on January 6, 2019, that recognized the newly created OCU.
Source: “Russia Church warns of violence as it ‘cuts ties’ with Bartholomew,” RFE/RL, The Ukrainian Weekly, September 23, 2018.