The Russian Orthodox Church continues to assert that it will be able to block Ukraine’s drive for autocephaly, but three developments which surfaced on September 6 suggest that Moscow Patriarch Kirill knows that he and his organization have lost and that the Ukrainian Church will become autocephalous soon.
First, and most obviously, spokesmen for the Russian Church are now attacking the ecumenical patriarch in ever sharper tones – an indication that talks are effectively over and that Moscow has lost. The words of Father Sergii Karmyshev of the Rybinsk bishopric are typical.