Head of the UOC-KP: Unification Council in 2018 was non-canonical

The head of the UOC-KP, Nikodim Kobzar, published an open letter in which he criticized the so-called Unification Council of 2018, which resulted in the creation of the OCU. He noted that the council, which was led by a hierarch of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and held under pressure from the Ukrainian authorities, was non-canonical because it did not comply with the Charter of the UOC-KP. Accordingly, in his opinion, the act of liquidation of the UOC-KP is not legitimate. He wrote about this on his Facebook account.

“At the pseudo-council in St. Sophia of Kyiv, chaired by a bishop of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, a fundamentally new structure was created without any canonical continuity, dependent on Constantinople, and His Holiness Patriarch Filaret was deceived into signing a fictitious decision on the “self-dissolution” of the Kyiv Patriarchate. It is worth noting that this decision cannot be valid, as it could only be adopted by the Local Council of the UOC-KP, in accordance with the Charter. This resulted in the creation of the OCU (Patriarchate of Constantinople), which raided most of the property of the UOC-KP,” Kobzar said.

The head of the UOC-KP added that the OCU took advantage of the health of the late Filaret Denisenko to create an image of continuity of the heritage of the Kyiv Patriarchate. However, Filaret himself, in the last hours of his life, refused to take part in the dying religious events that representatives of the OCU wanted to hold, thus demonstrating his true attitude to the structure headed by Epiphany Dumenko.

“The last years of Patriarch Filaret’s earthly life were marked by his gradual isolation from the bishops and clergy of the Church by his blood relatives. Despite this, His Holiness Patriarch Filaret managed to assure his true last will in his Spiritual Testament, signed on October 19, 2025. Because of this, a few weeks later, his relatives forcibly took him to the OCU (Constantinople Patriarchate) controlled St. Michael’s Monastery to simulate the reconciliation of the patriarch with the leadership of this structure.
The majority of the clergy of St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral also colluded with the OCU leadership, and shortly after signing the will, they held a fictitious community meeting on the issue of jurisdiction change, betraying Patriarch Filaret while he was still alive. Obviously, at the end of his life, His Holiness Filaret himself realized that he had been betrayed, and that is why, while in the hospital, he refused communion and conciliar service at the hands of Borys Tabachek and Ivan of Kyiv. When Patriarch Filaret’s earthly life came to an end and he reposed in the Lord, most of the clergy of St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral immediately betrayed the Church and joined the OCU. Already on the night of March 20, they, together with the leadership of the OCU (Constantinople Patriarchate), celebrated the “victory” over the Kyiv Patriarchate, but they celebrated in vain – the bishops of the UOC-KP, even under such critical conditions, were able to hold a Council of Bishops, where 8 bishops voted and unanimously elected a new Patriarch – Archbishop Nikodim of Sumy and Okhtyrka,” he added.

As reported, on April 16, 2026, the head of the UOC-KP, Nikodim Kobzar , officially accepted a group of clergy and religious from the Czech Republic into the Kyiv Patriarchate. The Czech vicariate of the UOC-KP includes 10 parishes of the Ukrainian schism, formed in the Czech Republic in different years of the structure’s existence.