The “Bishop” of the OCU in the Kherson region Boris Kharko (a former hierarch of the UAOC) in an interview with “Religious Truth” said that the departure of “Archbishop” Igor Isichenko to the UGCC in 2015 was a blow to his structure, due to which the leadership of the UAOC was forced to strengthen its positions in the East of Ukraine. “I became a monk in 2015. I was the chairman of the Lviv brotherhood and agreed,” explained Boris Kharko.

“I don’t know exactly why lord Igor did this. We have always supported him, I headed the Lviv Brotherhood from 2013 to 2015. He was in the council of the brotherhood since 2002, we organized his visits to the Lviv region. We spoke on the basis of keeping the church charter. Therefore, the late head of the UAOC, Mefodiy, never convened a single local council. And they had to be convened every three years,” says a former representative of the UAOC.

Also, according to him, the UAOC “always referred to the authority of Constantinople, and lord Igor also always emphasized the authority of Constantinople.” In addition, the early agreements with the Phanar, as Boris Kharko says, “were announced in a narrow circle before 2000.”

“We wrote congratulations to the Phanar as the Lviv brotherhood, and received congratulations from Patriarch Bartholomew. Although we were “schismatics”, we received congratulations. And my predecessor, the chairman of the brotherhood, Roman Maksymovych, met with Patriarch Bartholomew in 1998. And the will of Patriarch Dymytriy by non-election as the successor of the patriarch was conditioned by the agreements with Constantinople. And we had a joint trip to Constantinople with the UOC-KP, and there they also voiced the topic: not a single head of churches, in isolation, can claim the throne of the primate. This was announced in a narrow circle to autocephalous people before 2000,” said Boris Kharko.