There was no statement about the appearance of any new status in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, said the head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk. According to him, there was no statement about the separation of the UOC from the Russian Orthodox Church.. Earlier it was reported that the Council of the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate decided on complete independence and independence from the Russian Orthodox Church.

“There is an opinion that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has separated from the Russian Orthodox Church, this is not so.. There was no statement about secession from the Russian Orthodox Church,” Metropolitan Hilarion commented to journalists on what happened in Kyiv. On May 27, the Council of the UOC was held there.

“No statement was made that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church would have some kind of new status,” said a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church. On the contrary, Metropolitan Hilarion noted, the UOC has once again confirmed that it has the status of independence and independence, which was given to it in 1990.

Meanwhile, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Onufry, during the Sunday service, mentioned Patriarch Kirill in the way adopted for the heads of autocephalous (independent) churches.

Listing the primates of the Orthodox churches in his prayer, he called Patriarch Kirill the third - after the patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem - and missed the wording "

Before the war, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was formally subordinate to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. However, after the start of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, many Ukrainian priests refused to commemorate Cyril during church services because he did not condemn the invasion..