THE WAR, THE UKRAINIAN CHURCHES AND NATO

More than 40 countries agreed to take part in a peacekeeping operation in the east of Ukraine to establish peace, restore sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, as stated by President Petro Poroshenko. When Russia-backed separatists seized control of Crimea in 2014, they took control of key military and government sites on the Ukrainian peninsula. They also targeted another institution – the branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that is centered in Kyiv and not Moscow. President Petro Poroshenko held a meeting with faction leaders of the Parliament and urged them to support the Appeal to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I on granting Tomos of Autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church.