A well-known Greek lawyer, an employee of the UN legal department, Spyros Bazinas, commenting on the visit of Patriarch Bartholomew to the United States, analyzes how geopolitical alignments can affect the “Ukrainian church issue”, writes Romfea.

“The Patriarch believes that he has fulfilled his duty to the believers of Ukraine and history. The Moscow Patriarchate believes that the Ecumenical Patriarch invaded the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate and persecuted the canonical Ukrainian Church, therefore he stopped commemorating him.

And the United States has repeatedly declared its support for the granting of autocephaly by the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the Ukrainian national church.

However, as a result, the schism in the Ukrainian church has not been healed. On the contrary, a split is now in the whole world Orthodoxy. Now what?

The United States is pulling the strings and wants to join Ukraine to NATO and the EU, we are actually in a war, since Russia can neither abandon the Russian or Russian-speaking people of eastern Ukraine, nor agree to the deployment of NATO missiles on its borders. And the Ecumenical Patriarchate, by its very nature, would not want to participate in a war, even without its knowledge.

But there is one “but”. If the United States considers that it needs Russia’s help in its conflict with China, the Ukrainian issue will be frozen, and the split both in Ukraine and in world Orthodoxy will be perpetuated, ”Bazinas said.