After five years of Russia’s escalating hybrid war against Ukraine, its multi-dimensional political, economic, civil, military and cultural conflict eventually reached, in late 2018, the religious sphere. The fundamental reconstitution of relations between the Russian and Ukrainian Christian communities expressed itself in early 2019 when Ukraine received a so-called “tomos” (“small book”). This document made, in Kyiv’s view, Ukrainian Orthodoxy canonically independent from Moscow. It was issued by Istanbul’s Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople — an Eastern Christian church that occupies a special place of honor in the Orthodox world.
Russia's War Against Ukraine
OP-ED
Andreas Umland, Christine Borovkova: Ukrainian autocephaly and the Moscow Patriarchate
Metropolitan Epifaniy, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, leads the Orthodox Christmas service in St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Jan. 7, 2019.
