Former CIA officer: U.S. paid Phanar $20 million for the creation of OCU

Poroshenko and Patriarch Bartholomew. Photo: Reuters

March 12, 2025 – Former CIA officer John Kiriakou claimed in an interview with American blogger Julian Dorey that Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople had received money for establishing the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).

While discussing corruption schemes in Ukraine, Kiriakou also touched on religious matters. According to him, Hillary Clinton, while serving as U.S. Secretary of State, asked Patriarch Bartholomew to declare the Ukrainian Church autocephalous so that it "would no longer be subject to the whims of the Russian Patriarch."

He stated that the head of Phanar initially did not consider it a good idea, since this issue is the prerogative of the Russian Orthodox Church.

"And Hillary supposedly said, 'Would $20 million help make a decision? Well, the Greek Orthodox Church is under the thumb of neo-Ottoman Turks.' So he said, 'Yes, we could use the $20 million.' She then said, 'We have to give it to you through Ukrainian banks.' 'That's fine,'" Kiriakou recounted, referring to an alleged conversation between Clinton and Patriarch Bartholomew.

According to Kiriakou, "The State Department wires $20 million, probably through USAID, to some Ukrainian bank. The Ukrainians do whatever it is they usually do behind closed doors in Ukrainian banks, and they send $15 million to the Patriarch."

"He then says, 'Wait a minute, where's the other five? It was supposed to be $20 million, where’s the five?' And the State Department replies, 'Oh, we don’t know anything about that. All we know is that we paid. So now you must declare the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,'" Kiriakou continued, stressing that this "immediately caused a near-war situation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church."

According to Wikipedia, John Kiriakou was an intelligence analyst and operations officer in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, as well as a senior investigator for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It will be recalled that the OCU was established in 2018, while Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.

As previously reported by the UOJ, immediately after the creation of the OCU, Patriarch Bartholomew stated that he had not taken any money for it, receiving only chocolates from Petro Poroshenko.

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