The OCU was from beginning to end a political project of the United States, said the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations (DECR) of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Volokolamsk, RIA Novosti writes.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, as part of his two-day visit to Kiev, will meet with the head of the OCU Epiphany (Dumenko).

“The fact that the US Secretary of State met with the leader of the schism, but did not meet with any other religious leader … testifies once again that the so-called OCU, headed by the so-called Metropolitan, but in fact the false Metropolitan Epiphanius, is a US project, a political project from beginning to end. This is not something that was born in the depths of church life – this is something that was created by the Americans in order to once again embody the principle by which they are guided: “divide and rule”, – said hierarch.

He noted that Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople became an instrument for the embodiment of this principle. “The person who carried out this American plan was Patriarch Bartholomew. His dependence on America is also quite obvious, everyone knows, and, in fact, nobody is hiding it,” he added.