It is in the context of the Ukrainian schism that we see that Ecumenical Orthodoxy is being forced to retreat from the canonical order, which for tens of centuries has been the cornerstone of the Church of Christ, political scientist Andrei Vidishenko believes.

“It is well known that the Orthodox Church has a horizontal decision-making system, like the Vatican, a pronounced vertical, headed by the Pope, is absent. The head of the Orthodox Church is Christ, not the Patriarch of Constantinople or any other primate of one of the 15 Local Churches. The jurisdiction of the Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople does not extend to other Local Churches and is limited to the dioceses of the Church of Constantinople itself, therefore the Patriarchate of Constantinople can relatively painlessly grant autocephaly only to the diocese directly included in the zone of its canonical jurisdiction.

Rejecting the traditional idea of ​​the position of Local Churches, previously generally accepted for centuries in all 15 sister Local Churches, Phanariots form a false idea of ​​their own role in the Church of Christ. Borrowing a model of hierarchy and governance from the Vatican, the Patriarchate of Constantinople unilaterally lobbies for the reorganization of the Ecumenical Orthodox Church in the image of the Roman Catholic Church. The Phanariots are trying to transform the symbolic primacy of honor, contrary to the canons, into the primacy of power, a kind of papal authority according to the formula primus sine paribus, that is, “the first without equals” with universal jurisdiction. Phanar is trying to form an alternative ecclesiology, according to which the Patriarch of Constantinople will have a special status, rights and powers in world Orthodoxy. The ideas of ethnophyletism, when general church interests are sacrificed to national-political ones, and the promotion of the concept of pan-Hellenism among the clergy of semi-dependent churches of the Greek tradition (with the argument about the priority of Greeks in Ecumenical Orthodoxy as opposed to Slavism) also play an important role in this process. Thus, we are talking about both theological and political claims of the Phanariots. It is these non-canonical claims for purely political reasons that the US State Department has consistently supported. It is obvious that Washington, as a force interested in deepening the confrontation between the Local Orthodox Churches, will not abandon the hope of making the process of the split of the Church irreversible.

The categorical approach of the Phanariots and their American patrons excludes the possibility of a constructive dialogue, and now we can already testify that the process around the so-called. “Ukrainian autocephaly” as an integral element of the “geopolitization” of Orthodoxy, forcibly launched by external forces, is capable of destroying the unity of the Ecumenical Apostolic Orthodox Church according to the patterns of the Great Schism of 1054.

At the same time, I have to note that in ecclesiological terms, the situation on the territory of Ukraine after the so-called. “Tomos” has not changed much. A non-canonical structure was created in a non-canonical way, and it is a priori impossible to create a canonical structure in a non-canonical way. Therefore, the “Tomos” itself, signed in violation of the canons of the Orthodox Church, in the ecclesiological sense, does not possess any canonical power. Schismatic structures both were and remain schismatic from the point of view of the norms of canon law, and canonical Orthodoxy within Ukraine continues to be exclusively one institution in the person of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, led by its Primate – His Beatitude Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine Onufriy, ”the political scientist believes.