On , 1654, in Pereiaslav, Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi and a Cossack officer concluded an agreement with the Moscow government, which, despite its content, marked the beginning of the process of Cossack Hetmanet's accession to the Tsardom of Moscovy. Such a significant change in the political life of Ukraine could not but affect the position of the Metropolitanate of Kyiv.By the time of the Pereiaslav Treaty, the Moscow Church had existed for more than two centuries as a self-proclaimed autocephalous unrecognized church. From 1589 it received the status of a patriarchate from the Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II. The Metropolitanate of Kyiv continued to remain autonomous within the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. At the same time, after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the degree of ecclesiastical dependence of Kyiv on Constantinople became less and less significant. This gave Ukrainian historians reason to say: