The shameful chronicle of one week: how the OCU was born
Exarchs under escort, a call from the operations room, and 36 votes for Epifaniy: what a member of the Phanar delegation revealed about the 2018 "Council".
The UOJ-USA has published an internal report by a cleric of the Patriarchate of Constantinople who accompanied Metropolitan Emmanuel of France in Kyiv in December 2018. The document is addressed personally to Patriarch Bartholomew and was written about a month after the events, in January 2019. It covers exactly one week: from Monday, December 10, when the author flew to Kyiv, to Sunday the 16th, when the delegation returned to the Phanar. According to the publication's sources, the author of the report is the current Metropolitan Gregorios of Ankara, who in 2018 was a young deacon of the Patriarchate. This is neither journalism nor memoir, but an official report of the kind written for a single reader, and therefore with utmost candor and in every detail.
It is precisely this that makes the document both valuable and dangerous for the Phanar. All public statements by the Ecumenical Patriarchate about the "Unification Council" of December 15, 2018, at which the OCU was actually created, were couched in the most solemn terms: the Patriarchate, "in praise of God and in great joy," announced the successful conclusion of the Council. The report, however, was written by a direct participant in the events and was not intended for public scrutiny. Consequently, the picture it presents is entirely different, and so are the colors in which those events are depicted.
The authenticity of the document is indirectly attested by the author's awareness: he knew the protocol of the Phanar delegation down to the smallest details, including the names of the Presidential Administration staff and the schedule of meetings with UOC bishops and OCU "hierarchs," as well as the exact breakdown of the votes when the list of three candidates for the post of head of the newly created structure was compiled.
It should be noted that the Greek media have already managed to comment on the document, and in their opinion "it is concrete enough not to be left unanswered." "If political pressure was exerted on the patriarchal delegation, this needs to be clarified. If the descriptions are inaccurate, an equally clear denial backed by facts is needed. Silence leaves room for suspicions surrounding the critical days of December 2018," says "Ekklisia Online". Well, let us see what the report of a participant in those very events says.
She teaches, and you learn
The author of the chronicle is convinced that the main task of the Phanar delegation in Kyiv was to protect the interests of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It was precisely from this that the delegation proceeded in its work in Ukraine.
Here is a conversation in a restroom, where the author went "to splash a little water on his face" and met "Archbishop" Eustratius Zoria, at that time Filaret's right-hand man. Zoria asks how he sees the situation. The answer is worth quoting, because it is, in essence, a manifesto: "We did not come here to negotiate, nor to call into question the rights of the Mother Church. She teaches, and you learn. In this case we are not negotiating as equals with equals."
And further: "Do you want insane demands? You will remain in schism. This is the last chance for the elder Filaret to become a hero. If he misses it, he will end his life a schismatic. We are in the position of benefactors, not the benefited."
And all this is said not by a metropolitan or a patriarch, but by a Phanar deacon – in a restroom, to a Ukrainian "archbishop" who formally stands far above him in the hierarchy. It is telling that Zoria not only was not offended by his interlocutor's brazen tone, but even thanked him.
The same intonation is heard from Metropolitan Amphilochios of Adrianople, when on the day after the Council he serves at St. Michael's Monastery and says that the Mother Church "baptized the Ukrainian people anew."
The author relays this without a shadow of embarrassment, as a very felicitous remark. But let us consider what this phrase meant for those who heard it: a people with a thousand-year Christian history is declared baptized anew because a Constantinople delegation spent a week in Kyiv and organized a "council" at which schismatics received legitimacy. This position strongly resembles colonial rhetoric, and for Ukrainian church self-awareness it is offensive regardless of jurisdiction.
No less expressive is the scene concerning the dissolution of the structures of the Kyiv Patriarchate and the UAOC.
First, the author writes their names only in quotation marks. Second, he explains to Zoria that the document on self-dissolution must be signed before the Unification Council, because dissolving at it an organization that "the Mother Church never recognized" would mean indirectly recognizing it (!). Thus a representative of the Patriarchate of Constantinople effectively confirmed that the Phanar never considered the UOC-KP and the UAOC to be a Church. But the author goes further and adds a threat: if there is no dissolution, Metropolitan Emmanuel will not take part in the forthcoming event, "and you will be disgraced to the ends of the earth." And immediately, in parentheses, he reveals to the reader his "hidden calculation," writing about it bluntly: if something went wrong, the Ukrainians would retain a path back, but with dissolution "this path of retreat would be closed, and they would be bound."
In essence, this is the key phrase of the entire document. It explains very well why the Phanar needed the self-dissolution of the UOC-KP and the UAOC on the eve of the Council rather than after it: not for the sake of ecclesiological purity, but to bind the participants and deprive them of room for maneuver. The author himself calls it a calculation and himself calls it hidden. It turns out that the Patriarchate of Constantinople understood perfectly well that the representatives of the UOC-KP were capable of any "maneuvers" and could simply deceive the Greeks without a twinge of conscience.
Filaret's break with the OCU in 2019, when he tried to revive the Kyiv Patriarchate and discovered that legally it no longer existed, only confirmed the fears of the Phanar delegation.
The guest residence and the operations room
The official version of the events of December 2018 has always insisted that the state merely "assisted" the Church. However, the chronicle shows with utmost candor what this "assistance" looked like from the inside.
The cleric of the Patriarchate who arrived in Kyiv was met by "Presidential Administration staff accompanied by police" and taken to the President's guest residence, where the exarchs were staying. On the evening of December 11, representatives of the special services came to this residence "for briefing" and reported to Metropolitan Emmanuel about "the real intention of many (bishops) from Onuphry's group to come to the Council" and about their "fears of Moscow." In other words, the Ukrainian intelligence services served as a source of information for the Constantinople delegation regarding the sentiments of the episcopate of the canonical UOC. The sessions on drafting the Statute of the future OCU were held "in the presence of Mr. Rostislav Pavlenko on behalf of Mr. President and Andriy Yurash" – the deputy head of the Presidential Administration and the then director of the Department for Religious Affairs of the Ministry of Culture. Filaret's demands concerning the Council were discussed at a meeting with the same Pavlenko and Yurash.
Then begins what in any other country would be called a scandal. To run ahead: after the failed night meeting with Poroshenko, which will be discussed in the next chapter, the exarchs decided to leave. Understanding that any discussion "aimed at working out a radical solution would be disrupted due to the constant surveillance of everything in the building," they switched to communicating "silently, by means of handwritten notes on paper." And the draft communiqué was sent to the Patriarch only in the morning – "solely because we knew that all telephone conversations are wiretapped." Metropolitan Emmanuel demonstratively bought a plane ticket at his own expense, "so that those in power would see it," packed his luggage, and called cars to take him to the airport.
What happened next, the author recounts almost in a matter-of-fact, report-like manner. The President asked Metropolitan Emmanuel to stop by the palace "for a short while." An hour passed, but there was still no word from him. Then a message arrived "that the police were coming to take all of us together to the Presidential Palace."
The delegation was brought "under the escort of a powerful police convoy." On the way, Bishop Daniel of Pamphilon, a US citizen, reported what was happening to the American embassy, and Metropolitan Amphilochios to the Greek Foreign Ministry. At the Presidential Palace, the Constantinople delegates had their phones taken away and were subjected to personal search. To Metropolitan Amphilochios's question, the head of the delegation, Metropolitan Emmanuel, replied that "we are detained and forbidden to leave the country."
The delegation was released only after a conversation with the Patriarch, and went to a restaurant to discuss matters "in another place." The author notes: "throughout the 'meal,' more than ten secret agents moved around us, making little effort to conceal their secret character."
Here it is worth recalling that all this is not "Moscow propaganda" but a documentary report by a Phanar cleric. It records that the exarchs of the Ecumenical Patriarch were in fact detained by the Ukrainian authorities, deprived of communication, and delivered under escort to the President, so that in their presence he might obtain the desired decision from Patriarch Bartholomew. The presence of the head of the security services at the late-night meeting involving Poroshenko, Filaret, and Emmanuel is mentioned by the author almost in passing, like a detail of the setting but it is a highly telling detail.
Separately, it is worth noting how the chronicle describes the state's participation in the "Council" itself.
Poroshenko personally persuaded Filaret to sign a renunciation of all positions in the new church structure and a document on the dissolution of the UOC-KP. Earlier, parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy had also gone to Filaret with the same purpose.
And when Denysenko from the rostrum of the "Council" demanded the right to run for the post of primate of the OCU, "someone in military uniform even approached the President and demanded Filaret's candidacy, but Mr. President restored order." In other words, the rules at the "Council" were determined by the President and his aides. In fact, it was a state-organized event to which “bishops” had been invited.
You are not ready for autocephaly
The central episode of the chronicle begins at eleven o'clock in the evening of December 13, when Poroshenko summons Metropolitan Emmanuel for a "consultation." The other exarchs wait in the reception room "in inexpressible anxiety and in the cold."
Metropolitan Emmanuel returns at two o'clock in the morning "in a dejected state" and reports that for the meeting with Poroshenko the special services demanded that he take off even his wristwatch, and that in the office, besides the president, sat Filaret and the head of the special services.
Filaret was "uncompromising and unyielding" and "enjoyed the silent support of the President." The outcome: "Unfortunately, we will fail."
The author describes in the utmost detail everything Filaret demanded. The day before, Zorya had read to the exarchs a draft communiqué according to which the future "Unification Council" elects a primate, but Filaret remains "Chairman of the Holy Synod, Exarch of All Ukraine with the rights of a Primate, that is, convening the Synod, episcopal elections, depositions, etc." Metropolitan Emmanuel explained that this "would be an unprecedented step in the ecclesiology of the Orthodox Church and we would become a laughingstock throughout Orthodoxy." However, Zorya "insisted very stubbornly, threatening that without this there would be no Council."
And here the author drops a phrase that explains well what was going on: "The paradox is that the representatives of the state, who had repeatedly assured us that they would in the end persuade the elder Filaret, at that hour took no more and no less than the position of Mr. Eustratius. His Grace the Exarch was left alone."
That is, at the decisive moment Poroshenko was ready to hand Filaret the actual governance of the new Church under a nominal primate, just so that the "Council" would take place. The Phanar refused this, and this is indeed an important point in the whole story – the one at which the interests of Constantinople and Kyiv genuinely diverged. In the Patriarchate of Constantinople they understood perfectly well who Filaret was and what he represented.
And here a logical question arises: did they understand this in Constantinople when they decided to lift the anathema from Denysenko, recognizing it as imposed for political considerations rather than for schism? The answer, it would seem, is obvious.
The denouement of the "Council" story comes on the afternoon of December 14 in the operations room, to which the exarchs were brought, again, under escort. Poroshenko sets up a speakerphone connection with the Patriarch. According to the report, Patriarch Bartholomew said to the President of Ukraine: "I learned from His Grace of France about the difficulties and I regret that the problematic behavior of one single person proves that you are not ready for autocephaly." And further: "I am not going to sell the dignity of the Patriarchate to any Filaret. And if you are unable to rein him in, I am sorry, but my people must leave. At the Phanar we have learned to fear no one and nothing."
Poroshenko's answer looks both strange and habitual for Ukrainian politicians, who are used to covering their actions with threats from Russia: "Your Holiness, the situation in Ukraine is such that if we do not hold the Council tomorrow, there is a likelihood of military intervention by Russia, which will see our weakness." The Patriarch replied: "Then correct the situation immediately."
Next, Poroshenko read out a draft of a letter that he himself would give Filaret to sign.
According to the draft, Filaret renounces any position in the new Church except permanent membership in the Synod. In the end, Patriarch Bartholomew agreed to continue, but only if "my Exarchs assure me that none of the privileges of the Mother Church is under threat." Poroshenko "immediately and joyfully said goodbye to everyone and hurried to the elder Filaret to obtain his signature with his own authority." The signature was brought an hour later. What Poroshenko said to Filaret we do not know. We know only that in 2019 Denysenko, reviving the UOC-KP, stated that he had been deceived – by Poroshenko, and by Dumenko and Zorya.
But let us return to the document and try to assess the situation. The Patriarch of Constantinople, in the presence of the president and his special services, states that Ukraine is not ready for autocephaly. The president responds not with a church argument but with a military one: without the "Council" there will be an invasion by the Russian Federation. And the next day the "Council" nevertheless took place. It took place not because a "readiness for autocephaly" suddenly appeared, but because a signature appeared, which the president obtained from a ninety-year-old "hierarch" and which the latter would later call obtained by deception.
The author, of course, reports this with delight, but a reader who does not belong to the Phanar delegation sees something else here. He sees that the Tomos was issued after pressure from Poroshenko, who used the argument of war, and that the Patriarch himself at the decisive moment knew that he was granting autocephaly to a church that he himself had called unready for it.
There is also a human dimension in the situation, which the author was unable to hide.
On the morning of December 15, when Filaret for hours does not sign the self-dissolution and the whole square in front of St. Sophia waits in the frost, the author writes: "In our souls we understood such an action. It was perfectly natural. The 'Kyiv Patriarchate' was for the ninety-year-old hierarch the work of his life and of his convictions." And at the end, when Zorya "in tears" hands Emmanuel the signed text and says: "Father, I think you know what this text means for us," the author replies: "The Mother Church is a physician. Every operation causes pain, but heals."
Half a year will pass, and the "healed" UOC-KP will rise from the operating table, declaring the entire "operation" unlawful, and the "surgeons" and their "assistants" deceivers. The chronicle, without intending to, explains with utmost clarity why this happened.
The Charter as an instrument
Disputes over who wrote the Charter of the OCU and whom it benefits have been going on since December 2018. Filaret, as we remember, claimed that the Charter was written in the interests of Constantinople. The chronicle of a member of the Phanar delegation essentially confirms this. The Charter was indeed written by the exarchs, "defending by all means the eternal privileges of the Holy Great Church of Christ," while the Ukrainian representatives merely accepted the text. The final edit the author made himself: "first I corrected it in Greek, and then in their language through English and Ukrainian translations." The Ukrainian text of the OCU Charter is thus a translation from Greek via English.
The most candid part of this section of the report is devoted to the technology of negotiations. The author puts "concessions" in quotation marks and explains that these were merely ruses for advancing the interests of the Phanar. He chooses the example himself.
The draft stated that the guarantor of the Charter is the Ecumenical Patriarch. They worked on this phrase for an hour. Finally Zorya asked what it meant, and Gregory, by his own account, had been waiting for this question "from the very beginning."
He declares that "today in the new Church there are grateful people, but tomorrow ungrateful ones will come and want to introduce provisions contradicting the Tomos, so the guarantor of the Charter's conformity with the Tomos must be the Patriarch."
Zorya proposed spelling this out in detail. They did. However, at the end of the session Eustratius admitted that the detailed wording "had become more binding than the original," but did not go on to change it. "I should have been content with the original," Zorya said. The author sums up: "By means of such practical and partly illusory 'concessions,' the position of the Holy Great Church of Christ was secured."
In fact, what we see here is not negotiations but behind-the-scenes games in which one side sets the rules and the other merely thinks it is participating in the discussion. This is worth recalling every time OCU representatives say that the Charter reflects the will of the Ukrainian church people.
The second example concerns the name of the new structure. During the final editing, Zorya proposed removing the word "Autocephalous" from the Church's official name, calling it "non-ecclesiological." The author agrees, but explains to the Patriarch the true background: Zorya did not want this word because of its association with Makariy's UAOC. As for the Phanar, Zorya's proposal suited it, "since 'autocephalists' is an odious and unacceptable notion." Thus the new church structure, for the sake of whose autocephaly the whole affair was undertaken, was left without the word "autocephalous" in its name: to one side it recalled competitors, to the other, schismatics. As for the Ukrainian people themselves, allegedly thirsting for autocephaly, no one in this situation even remembered them.
The third example, self-dissolution, has already been mentioned. But here one should also say something about the procedural side. On the morning of December 14, even before the call to the Patriarch, the author, with Emmanuel's permission, sets Pavlenko a condition: before the "Council" the legal entities of the Kyiv Patriarchate and the UAOC must be dissolved. Yurash suggests telling the representatives of these structures about it "privately, not in front of everyone." The author replies: "His Grace the Exarch will not come down to the Council if this is not done." Zorya tries to move the dissolution into the framework of the Council or to the time after it, but is refused. Then the Ukrainians ask to have a draft of the dissolution prepared for them, and… it is drafted by a deacon of the Patriarchate.
Thirty-six votes
How exactly Epifaniy was elected had until now been known only from the retellings of participants, which differed in details. The chronicle, however, gives figures from a person who himself affixed the Council's seal to the ballots and was "constantly present" at the vote count, which was led by Bishop Daniel (Zelinsky) of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
First, Metropolitan Emmanuel announced that all hierarchs could be candidates, "with the exception of two bishops – Filaret and Makariy." Filaret objected from his seat: "Are we deprived of the right of election? Everyone here has a name and a title. I have none. Why?" He was answered first by UOC Metropolitan Symeon (rather sharply), and then by Makariy. After that Metropolitan Emmanuel "with gravity and gratitude read out Metropolitan Filaret's letter to Your Holiness, in which he renounced any position in the new Church." Thus the letter extracted by Poroshenko the day before was presented to Filaret himself as a fact of renunciation, and this was done before two hundred delegates.
Then 121 people voted for a secret ballot and 41 for an open one. After that a list of three candidates was drawn up, in the formation of which "hierarchs," "clerics," and laity took part: Epifaniy – 81 votes, Symeon – 56, Mykhailo Zinkevych – 38.
And here there is an interesting moment: "Metropolitan" Mykhailo Zinkevych refused inclusion in the list. The next in votes, "Metropolitan" Dmytriy, also refused. After that, according to the author, everyone refused, "to the point that the elder Filaret was forced to beg someone who had received one vote each, even without their knowledge, to agree to inclusion among the 'three persons,' which is what happened."
That is, the third candidate in the final list turned out to be a person with a single vote, who was included there without even obtaining his consent! Only after this did Filaret "approach and, having voted, bless the ballot box with an effective and symbolic gesture." In the final vote, in which only "bishops" of the UOC-KP, the UAOC, and two bishops from the UOC took part, Epifaniy received 36 votes and Symeon (Shostatsky) 28.
Of the 64 "bishops" who voted, 36 spoke for Epifaniy, that is, slightly more than half. Symeon, the only one of the two bishops who had come over from the UOC to be nominated, received 28 votes. In all likelihood, besides Drabinko, a significant part of the UAOC "episcopate" voted for him, as well as those "hierarchs" of the Kyiv Patriarchate who did not want to see Filaret's protégé at the head. Had Mykhailo – according to the chronicle, the candidate of those "who opposed" – not withdrawn his candidacy, the alignment might have turned out differently. As a result, the first "Primate" of the OCU won by a margin of eight votes in an election in which the two main figures had been excluded in advance and the third candidate was entered on the list without his knowledge.
