By Taras Kuzio
On April 14, 2018, 268 deputies
in the Ukrainian parliament voted to appeal to Constantinople to grant
autocephaly, or independence, to the Orthodox church. Less than a year
later on January 5, Constantinople Patriarch Bartholomew signed the
official document known as the tomos that created a Ukrainian Orthodox
Church independent of Russia. Today, on Christmas Eve according to the
old Julian calendar, the tomos was transferred to Ukrainian President
Petro Poroshenko.
This event has major ramifications for Ukraine’s upcoming elections, the Orthodox world, relations with Russia, and geopolitics.
First, elections. The main beneficiary of the tomos is Poroshenko.
He has moved into second place in the polls, which means he is likely
to face former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the second round of
the presidential election in April. Ukrainians named
Poroshenko as politician of the year and the creation of an independent
Ukrainian Orthodox Church as the most important event of 2018.
It would be wrong to dismiss the push to free Ukraine’s church as a
pure election ploy. Negotiations for autocephaly began under President
Viktor Yushchenko (2005-2010). As Rostyslav Pavlenko,
who served as Poroshenko’s deputy head of the presidential
administration for humanitarian and societal issues and was the point
man on the issue until recently, observed, “This slow but steady
implementation is the result of the invisible preparatory work spanning
years before April 2018.” Of Ukraine’s five presidents, only pro-Russian
Viktor Yanukovych (2010-2014) never supported autocephaly.
Second, the Orthodox world. Before today’s move, the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church which came under the Moscow Patriarchate accounted for a
third of its total parishes and their loss reduces the size of the
Russian Orthodox Church to that of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Within
Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church will become a minority church with
its influence severely curtailed. In the political domain, its main
supporters—Party of Regions and Communist Party—belong to pre-2014 Ukrainian history while its current allies, the Opposition Bloc, are bitterly divided and weak.
Third, relations with Russia. These are continuing to deteriorate as seen in Russia’s naval piracy in the Black and Azov Seas. But, the tomos cannot be halted by the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Autocephaly adds to the deterioration of Russian soft power in other areas. On December 20, 240 parliamentary deputies voted
to require the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (the official name of the
Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine) to re-register as a Ukrainian branch
of the Russian Orthodox Church. As most of their parishes are in
western and central Ukraine, a large number of patriotic Ukrainians will
desert it because it will be henceforth openly linked to Russia.
Two-thirds of Ukrainians view Russia as an “aggressor country.”
Fourth, geopolitics. The tomos and Ukraine’s departure from the
Russian world reconfigure Eastern Europe’s geopolitical map, which was
created in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when Muscovy
transformed into the Russian Empire over three stages.
In 1654, Ukraine and Muscovy signed the Treaty of Pereyaslav, which
has always been viewed by Russian and Soviet leaders and historians as a
“reunion” and by Ukrainians as a tactical military alliance against
Poland. Crimea was transferred to Soviet Ukraine during the 1954 Soviet
commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the Pereyaslav Treaty. In annexing Crimea, Russia effectively ripped up the Treaty of Pereyaslav.
In 1686, Muscovy removed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from under
Constantinople’s canonical jurisdiction, placing it within the Russian
Orthodox Church for 332 years. In the autumn of 2018, Constantinople
declared this to have been uncanonical and returned Ukraine under its
jurisdiction.
In 1709, the Swedish-Ukrainian alliance was defeated by Muscovy
leading to its transformation into the Russian Empire in 1721. With
opinion polls showing two-thirds to three-quarters of Ukrainians viewing
Russian leaders, Russia’s political system, and Russian policies toward
Ukraine in highly negative terms, there is no likelihood of Ukraine
moving away from its European path. Ukraine, the largest country in the
EU’s Eastern Partnership, sees itself as irreversibly part of Europe.
Ukraine’s new Orthodox Church will be pro-European and will not
subscribe to the Russian Orthodox Church’s anti-Western xenophobia.
In 1991, Ukraine declared independence from the USSR and in 2018 from
the Russian world. Ukraine has chosen Europe over the Russian world.
New Europe, lying between NATO and the EU’s eastern frontier and Russia,
has been geopolitically reconfigured to what the region resembled prior
to Muscovy’s expansion westwards in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
Ukraine’s independence from Russia is Kyiv’s ultimate answer to
Putin’s unprovoked imperialism and military aggression. If Mikhail
Gorbachev lost the USSR, Putin will go down in history as having “lost
Ukraine” for good. As Patriarch Barthomelew put it, a new page in Ukraine’s history has been opened, and it will forever be part of Europe.
Taras Kuzio is a non-resident fellow at the Foreign Policy
Institute at Johns Hopkins-SAIS and professor at the National University
of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. He is also author of “Putin’s War Against
Ukraine” and co-author of “The Sources of Russia's Great Power Politics: Ukraine and the Challenge to the European Order.”