Ukrainian Orthodox Church says follow the gospel, not Putin

Beneath the gilded cupolas of his ornate Orthodox Christian church, the Rev. Andriy Kliushev had been seeking for years to convince his small Ukrainian congregation to end its centuries-old loyalty to Moscow.

Little did he know that it would be Russians themselves, in the form of brutal occupying forces who posted a sniper on the roof of his church in the leafy Kyiv suburb of Irpin, and detained and beat church volunteers for days, who would eventually push his flock away from the Moscow-based church.

In mid-May, Father Andriy’s congregation, after witnessing a variety of atrocities, voted to break with the Russian Orthodox Church and its Moscow Patriarch Kirill, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who