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After the Moscow meeting of delegations of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, Patriarch Bartholomew is seeing no obstacles to making fundamental decisions on the "Ukrainian" issue during the Constantinople Synod on July 11-12.

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"The Moscow meeting showed fundamentally differing positions of parties, which made impossible even the signing of a joint communique, or at least an agreed statement typical for such landmark meetings. In fact, the parties did not even hold discussions, they just exchanged ultimatums. Therefore, in principle, Patriarch Bartholomew has his hands untied for making fundamental decisions on the 'Ukrainian' issue during the next Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople on July 11-12," Oleksandr Sahan, religious scholar, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, wrote in his blog on LB.ua.

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According to the expert, the fact that the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church also plans to "discuss the issue of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church" at its meeting in Yekaterinburg on July 14 is another evidence that the recognition of Ukrainian church independent of any Moscow influence is inevitable.

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"Thus, Moscow is in fact ceasing further attempts to prevent the signing of Tomos and is now regrouping its forces – it calculates possible risks associated with the appearance of the recognized ("canonical" in Russian version) Orthodox structure in Ukraine. Obviously, there will be some resistance (primarily on the part of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra), and they will continue to bless the creation of resistance cells (which is already taking place in Ukraine with the involvement of groups of wannabe "Cossacks," various "private security structures", etc.).