Schismatics or Uniates: experts – about what autocephaly Poroshenko wants

Insisting that Ukraine has the right to the One Local Church, the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, did not indicate which of the faiths would serve as the basis for such a Church. Political experts believe that either the Kyiv Patriarchate or the UGCC can serve the basis for it, writes "Nezavisimaya Gazeta".

"Autocephaly is a protocol of the authorities' intentions on what kind of Ukraine they will build," Ukrainian political analyst Vladimir Skachko told the "Nezavisimaya" correspondent. "This will be unification on the principle: one country means one language, one people, one Orthodox Church. Poroshenko would say outright which of the three Ukrainian Churches would be the main one for autocephaly: the UOC-KP, the UAOC or the UOC-MP. Such slyness is terrible in that it gives unlimited scope for forceful unification and increases repression in relation to the UOC-MP."

Vladimir Skachko stressed that the Ecumenical Patriarch is unlikely to accept the Kyiv Patriarchate with the schismatic Filaret Denisenko under the omophorion.

"But Patriarch Bartholomew definitely will not object to extending his canonical territory at the expense of Ukraine," resumed the political analyst.

The leading researcher of the Institute of Russian Abroad Eduard Popov believes that the basis for the local Church will not be the UOC-KP, but the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.

"It is impossible to form the Local Church on the basis of a schismatic formation," Popov said. "Greek Catholics have difficult relations with the Vatican; they are inferior in number even to the UOC-KP. But the UGCC is a more historically rooted and developed in all respects structure than the UOC-KP, including in terms of ideology. The ideologist and the main inspirer of the euromaidan was now the late Cardinal Lyubomir Guzar, not Denisenko."