MOSCOW, September 30. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada delegate from the European Solidarity faction Irina Gerashchenko has said in her blog that the Ukrainian presidential office held talks with the Patriarchate of Constantinople to receive a new tomos for uniting the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).

"At Bankovaya (the location of the Ukrainian president’s office - TASS), they have been recently discussing crazy scenarios about a new tomos. Saying that it was necessary to unite the UOC and OCU as a new OCU and obtain a tomos with Zelensky’s signature and last name. The president’s office even sent envoys to the ecumenical patriarch - to test the waters," she wrote.

In 2018, after a Unification Council in Kiev, the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was created from two schismatic organizations, which later obtained autocephaly from Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. The Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) do not recognize the canonical status of this religious organization. After the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, its adherents began a campaign to seize the UOC’s church buildings by force. The Kiev regime supports the policy of driving the UOC out. On the instructions of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, the government drafted and submitted to the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) a bill permitting the wholesale banning of the UOC in the country should the Ukrainian authorities determine that it has ties to Russia. Over the past year, UOC priests have been accused of high treason or sanctioned while the takeover of churches by the schismatics has intensified.