The failure of ecumenism? The churches and the war in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine was preceded by religious conflicts, which date back to the country’s independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Orthodoxy accounts for most of the population in Ukraine but is divided into two jurisdictions not in communion with each other: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, canonically part of the Moscow Patriarchate until the outbreak of the conflict, and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was granted autocephaly by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 2019. This status is not recognised by Moscow, which broke off Eucharistic communion with Constantinople and the other churches that recognised Ukrainian autocephaly (Alexandria, Greece, Cyprus). The jurisdictional dispute underlies a conflict for primacy in Orthodoxy. By analysing the reasons for the unresolved religious conflicts in Ukraine and studying the intertwining of government policy and church politics both in Ukraine and in Russia, the article aims to gauge the impact of the war in Ukraine on the ecumenical movement. It focuses on church relations within the Ecumenical Council of Churches, the relations between Orthodoxy and the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, and the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue.