Patriarch Kirill linked the attempts to split the Orthodox Church in Ukraine to politics 
republics. This was stated by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia in an interview with the Russia-24 TV channel. His words are reported by TASS on Saturday, November 20.
“There is only one goal – [to be] as far from Russia and from the Russian Orthodox Church as possible, and this is a political goal, not a spiritual one,” he said. The patriarch added that for him there is no division into countries and peoples, but “there is a flock of the Russian Orthodox Church.”
In 2018, after the so-called unification council in Kiev, a church split occurred in Ukraine. At the initiative of the then President Petro Poroshenko and with the participation of the Primate of the Constantinople Orthodox Church (KOC) Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, schismatic movements – the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate of the UOC-KP) – formed the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which received from the KCC a tomos of autocephaly and passed on to his subordination. Most of the world's Orthodox churches, including the Russian Orthodox Church and its canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, did not recognize the new religious structure.