No Pan-Orthodox Assembly can now be recognized without the participation of the OCU, - Archbishop Yevstratiy

This was stated in an interview with Ukrinform by Deputy Head of the Department for External Church Relations of the OCU, Archbishop Yevstratiy (Zorya).

"Any Pan-Orthodox meeting that is not held by the Ecumenical Patriarch is illegal and is a violation of the canonical order. And so, if Moscow initiates some kind of meeting, and we have already seen one such meeting, which we tried to hold and which did not yield any useful fruits, then this is just an attempt to continue ignoring reality and work for the division of Orthodoxy," the hierarch stressed.

As it was reported, on November 21, 2019, Patriarch Theophilos of Jerusalem, at the suggestion of Moscow, announced the initiative to hold a meeting in Amman to discuss the "Ukrainian issue ". This meeting took place on February 26. It was attended by 4 out of 15 Orthodox Churches of the world.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew condemned the pro-Russian initiative of Theophilus, which is essentially directed against the authority of the primacy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church was defeated at the Pan-Orthodox meeting in Amman.

Moscow recently once again stated that "the previous mechanism for organizing meetings of Heads of Orthodox churches, when they were convened by the patriarch of Constantinople, no longer works," because Bartholomew, in their opinion, "has lost legitimacy."

"The Patriarch of Constantinople joined the schism, he concelebrated with schismatics and lost his legitimacy as the first among the equal Primates of Local Orthodox Churches in the family. Therefore, even if he calls such meetings, it is possible that some churches will go to them, but many will evade them under various pretexts. And this will be due to the fact that he violated the basic principle of coexistence of local Orthodox Churches – conciliarity," said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox church.

The Russian Orthodox Church hopes that in 2021 a meeting of the heads of local Orthodox Churches will be held in the "Amman format".

Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem in February again sent a message to the Primates of all Autocephalous Orthodox churches with a proposal to hold a new meeting on the Ukrainian issue.