Photo Credit: KyivPost
Excellent coverage by Alya Shandra at Euromaidan Press of Ukraine Orthodoxy push for autonomy from Moscow (Tomos Ante Portas: A Short Guide to Ukrainian Church Independence).
While much will be made of the idea that this represents Ukraine's continuing shift toward the West, the change is more meaningful domestically in order for Ukraine to recapture its own identity separate from Putin's narrative of a unified "Russian World" under Moscow's control. The Financial Times quotes "a person close to the Russian church" as saying, "If Putin decided to call it the Russian empire, it wouldn't change anything. It's just the same system with a different name. We--the Russian People--can't accept Ukraine as a separate state and they know it." The undying enmity of Russia toward a free Ukraine is the only threat to Ukraine's existence.
For Ukraine to be free, it will have to be economically, politically and socially independent from Russia. The independence of the Ukrainian church is the latest, and immeasurably important, reemergence of the Ukrainian identity that has been submerged under Russian imperialism since 1654.
The larger context for Ukrainian church independence is best summed up in Alya Shandra's article by Theologian Paul Gavrilyuk:
“Putin’s war in Ukraine may have gained Crimea by deceit, denial, and violence; it may have destroyed the infrastructure of a large part of Eastern Ukraine. But the long-term effect of the war was to push Ukraine away from Russia culturally and economically, and with that, the collateral damage to Russia’s own economic interest in Europe has been considerable. Putin has attempted to re-colonize Ukraine; in reality, he has continued to impoverish his own people and, paradoxically, will leave the wanna-be-empire even more vulnerable to the economic colonization by China. It does not take a ‘Slavophile’ to understand this point. Long-term, Constantinople’s historic act will bring greater peace to Europe.”
