Kiev has justified its actions against the UOC by claiming it has ties to Moscow, although the Church formally declared independence from the Russian Orthodox Church in May 2022.

Orthodoxy came to the lands of the Rus. This early chronicle was, according to church tradition, written by St. Nestor of the great Kiev-Pechersk Monastery, founded in 1051.

Patriarch Filaret heads the Kiev Patriarchate, a branch of the Orthodox Church that broke away from Moscow in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union and the declaration of an independent Ukraine.