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Ukrainian Orthodox church wins approval to break away from the Moscow Church
bne IntelliNews
The Ukrainian Orthodox church won approval from the patriarch in Istanbul to break away from the Moscow patriarchy and become an independent church on October 11, creating a schism that deepens the rifts between Ukraine and Russia and could end in violence.
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko applied to the head of the Orthodox Church based in Istanbul for autocephaly, or independence, and a ruling to separate the Ukrainian church from the Russian one in April this year, but the Russian clergy fiercely opposes the biggest split in Christianity since 1054 when the Catholic and Orthodox churches divided.
Ukraine and Russia trace their Orthodox Christian roots to Volodymyr the Great, the prince whose baptism in 988 in Kiev led to the christianisation of the region known as the “Kievan Rus”.
At a three-day synod presided over by the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, the seat of the Orthodox Church, Ukraine’s request for independence was endorsed. The synod said it will “proceed to the granting of Autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine,” a statement said, reports Reuters.
“The decisions of the Ecumenical Patriarch and Synod finally dispelled the imperial illusions and chauvinistic fantasies of Moscow,” Poroshenko said after the announcement. “It is a question of our independence, national security, statehood, a question of world geopolitics.”
The decision is a boon for Poroshenko, who is due to stand for re-election in March next year and is currently trailing in the polls behind his rival opposi- tion leader, former prime minister and head of the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party Yulia Tymoshenko. Poroshenko has been playing the “tough leader in a time of war” card and attacking Russian interests by banning fights, books and TV broadcasters to bolster his patriot image.
As part of the decision the synod rehabilitated the Ukrainian patriarch who was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox church for breaking away in the early 1990s.
The Moscow Church promised "harsh response after Constantinople actions concerning Ukraine". The Russian Orthodox Church said it would break eucha- ristical relations with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and create a schism in the 300mn strong Orthodox Church for the first time in a millennium.
Kyiv is the birthplace of the Russian Orthodox Church.
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At the same time, another oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky has threatened to challenge any privatisation sale as his company Nortima says it would regard any sale as the purchase of stolen assets following a 2009 tender in which Nortima outbid two rivals with an offer of $600mn at the exchange rate at the time, but was rejected by the Ukrainian authorities.
Mysterious 'coal king'
Kropachev is close to Ihor Kononenko, who is a close associate and long-
time business partner of Poroshenko. Kononenko, the first deputy head of the Poroshenko Bloc faction in parliament, is regarded as a 'grey cardinal' on the Ukrainian political scene for his leading role in unofficial negotiations with other parliamentary factions, and together with Poroshenko owns various business- es and funds as bne IntelliNews described in a detailed investigation “LONG READ: Poroshenko’s empire – the business of being Ukraine’s president” published in August 2016.
Kropachev’s three coal cleaning facili- ties were added to his portfolio in 2016, after he reached arrangements on their purchase with representatives of Mako Group run by Oleksandr Yanukovych, the eldest son of the former Ukrainian president, who fled the country in 2014.
Meanwhile, Chervonolymanska was acquired by Kropachev’s conglomerate in late 2017. Igor Humeniuk, a former member of the pro-Russian Party of Regions, acted as the seller of the asset: his companies were listed as the official owners of a majority shareholding in Donbasenerho, which went private serv- ing Oleksandr Yanukovych’s interests, according to the Ekonomichna Pravda online outlet.
In February, Ukraine's leading energy conglomerate DTEK, controlled by fellow oligarch Akhmetov, complained that Centrenergo cancelled coal supply contracts and refuses to purchase its coal any more, buying from Kropachev's coal companies instead.
The Centrenergo-DTEK agreements were broken in late 2017, when Cher-