Moscow Patriarchate

Russia's theory of diminished sovereignty for Ukraine is linked to its refusal to recognise an autocephalous Church, as it does with all other national autocephalous Churches.

Long before his 24 February invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s in his two decades in power made enormous headway in his bid to expand Russian influence in Greece.

The meeting with the US President comes at a time that US-Turkish relations are at rock bottom and in a period when the Ecumenical Patriarchate has been attacked by the Russian Church and the Kremlin.

Seeking primacy in the Orthodox world, the Russians historically called Moscow the “third Rome”,  after the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium)

The Patriarchate of Moscow said that even lay people are not permitted to participate in sacraments conducted by clergy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Metropolitan Hilarion, the Moscow Church's foreign secretary, warned that 'half of the Orthodox will no longer recognise Patriarch Vartholomeos as the first [ranking bishop] in the family of Orthodox Churches'.

The Ukrainian issue, and the prospect of the Ecumenical Patriarchate granting the Orthodox Church of Ukraine independence is the largest and most serious administrative problem since the collapse of the Soviet Union