There was no US influence in the formation of the OCU, Patriarch Bartholomew signed a tomos for the OCU solely for reasons of overcoming the split. Archimandrite Cyril (Hovorun) spoke about this on the air of the channel Georgian Public TV, he published a recording of the conversation on June 12, 2021 on his Youtube.

According to him, “millions of people in Ukraine who could not come to Georgia to receive Holy Communion, could not come to Athos. I myself took part in the negotiations, but we churchly could not solve this problem. I would not want politicians to participate in this,” said Hovorun.

He is also “very grateful to the Ecumenical Patriarch that the problem of the schism has been resolved.” In addition, he told the Georgian audience that “Orthodox Christians in Ukraine, regardless of whether the MP is an autocephalous church, can now go freely to attend services everywhere, except, perhaps, in Russia.”

In addition, Hovorun assured that there is a division in Orthodoxy in Ukraine itself, but “it is political, regulated by Moscow in order to return part of Ukrainian society under its control.”

The archimandrite admitted that Poroshenko participated in the church process in 2018 because he thought to be re-elected, but “for us, church people, this is much more important to overcome the schism in Ukraine.”