The UOC was independent before, and the amendments made to its Charter by the Council on May 27 eliminated those provisions that could give rise to an ambiguous interpretation of the norms on its independence. The head of the Information and Education Department of the UOC, Metropolitan of Nizhyn and Pryluky UOC Kliment, said this to the BBC.

“We were independent and independent before,” Metropolitan Clement tells the BBC. “By amending the charter, the council eliminated those provisions that could give rise to an ambiguous interpretation of the norms on the independence of our church. [In the new edition of the charter] there is not a word about Russia, neither about the ROC, nor about Moscow. [In addition, it is separately indicated that] the leading center of the UOC is located in Kyiv.”

However, the authors of the article ask themselves, how is the UOC connected with world Orthodoxy now, after the mention of the ROC has disappeared from its charter?

The delegate of the cathedral, with whom the BBC spoke, explains: this issue was resolved by the fact that the text of the charter included a reference to the Blessed Charter of Patriarch Alexy II of 1990 – it was with this document that the Russian Church turned its Ukrainian Exarchate into a self-governing Ukrainian Church. Actually, this letter also speaks of the mediation of the Russian Church in the communication of the UOC with world Orthodoxy.”

“Although we are not part of the diptych, we have much more rights and opportunities than those churches that are part of it,” Metropolitan Clement told the BBC.

For example, the UOC decided to open its parishes abroad in order to take care of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who fled from the war outside their homeland. The same OCU forbids opening parishes abroad by its tomos of autocephaly, the believers of this church abroad are supposed to deal with the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Metropolitan Clement explains that the Primate of the UOC is not part of the Synod of the Russian Church: “Who is a member of the synod of the ROC determines the charter of the ROC. But this document does not apply to the UOC, because we have had our own charter on governance for three decades. the obligation of His Beatitude [Primate of the UOC] to be a member of the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church is no longer in question.”

“In fact, yesterday we defined the format of our church as absolutely autocephalous,” Metropolitan Clement tells the BBC. The refusal to use this particular term, according to him, is quite easy to explain: “They don’t proclaim autocephaly, they receive autocephaly. If we had proclaimed autocephaly yesterday, it would have ended in a split and a global crisis in Ukrainian Orthodoxy.”