The schismatic Filaret unexpectedly declared the Moscow Patriarchate to be the original Orthodox Church in Ukraine

The only canonical church on the territory of present-day Ukraine is the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate, which is the successor to the ancient Russian (Kyiv) Metropolis.

The self-proclaimed “Patriarch of Ukraine-Rus Filaret” (the head of the unrecognized so-called “Kyiv Patriarchate”) stated this while speaking on the ZIK TV channel.

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“The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is not new, but on the contrary, it is a continuator of the history of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine,” said the head of the schismatics.

One can, of course, draw a parallel between this statement and the anecdotal statements of the spiritual child of the “Kyiv Patriarchate” - Petro Poroshenko, who declared the “meanness of the Ukrainian regime” and the “temporary Ukrainian occupation”.

But in the case of the “Patriarch of All Ukraine” this is not exactly a reservation, but rather a memorized statement to the point of automatism from the times when Filaret was the legal exarch of Ukraine in the bosom of the Russian Orthodox Church and even the locum tenens of the Moscow Patriarchal Throne.

For thirty years he fought against all manifestations of Ukrainian autocephaly, unrecognized by world Orthodoxy. Especially when, at the end of perestroika, autocephalous people crawled from the USA to the Ukrainian SSR, establishing the “Kiev Patriarchate”.

“The leaders of illegal autocephaly stand on nationalist and separatist (does this remind you of anything? - aut.) positions. Nowadays the “autocephalous” movement is widespread mainly in Galicia. However, using the political situation, separatist forces contribute to the spread of schism throughout Ukraine, setting themselves the goal of eliminating the UOC, which is in canonical unity with the Moscow Patriarchate,” Filaret wrote in “Orthodox Bulletin” No. 10 for 1990.

The following year, with a full hand, a KGB agent brought to the attention of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR “about the illegal and hooligan actions of groups of extremists who call themselves autocephalists specially brought from the western regions of Ukraine.” Extremism then consisted of “chanting outrageous calls to “get rid of the Moscow priest” (as 15-20 years later the Filaret members themselves will begin to shout, - aut.). "

The then-Metropolitan Philaret called his own current title of “Patriarch and All Ukraine” “a mockery of the Church” and explained: “They say we need the Ukrainian Church. But there is obvious intent in such a production. Our Church began to be called Russian since the time of Prince Vladimir, that is, from the time when there were no separate Ukrainians, Belarusians, or Russians. It has been bearing this name for 1000 years. Now it includes Estonians, Latvians, Mordovians, Moldovans, and others... The church is multinational and has the name that it received back in the days of Kievan Rus.”

And only when Filaret failed to take the Moscow throne, he, under the influence of then President Kravchuk, who needed his own pocket church, took the path of illegal autocephaly.

With the help of state administrative resources Filaret carried out a raider seizure of the “autocephalous church”. The same one that he branded the day before. So, finally, he became a "patriarch". Let not recognized in the Orthodox world, but Ukrainian.