Image copyright EPA Image caption Many Ukrainians welcomed Constantinople's ruling earlier this year, holding a prayer in Kiev

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has announced the creation of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, marking a historic split from Russia.

He said national security depended on "spiritual independence" from Russia.

He was speaking at a special council of orthodox priests in Kiev, where a new leader of the church was selected.

The Russian Orthodox Church cut ties with the spiritual authority of the world's Orthodoxy after it recognised the Ukrainian Church's independence.

Russia also fears that its churches in Ukraine could be seized.

Despite Russia banning priests from the branch of the Church loyal to Moscow from the event, two of its bishops were seen arriving for the council in Kiev.

What happened in Kiev?

The special council was held in the ancient St Sophia's Cathedral - one of Kiev's best known landmarks.

Ukrainian clerics of different Orthodox denominations elected 39-year-old Metropolitan Epifaniy as the leader of the new church.

Epifaniy is now expected to travel to Istanbul on 6 January to receive a special decree, a tomos, granting independence (autocephaly) to the new church from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

"This day will go into history as a sacred day... the day of the final independence from Russia," President Poroshenko told a crowd of thousands outside the cathedral.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Believers gathered outside the cathedral on Saturday

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Orthodox clergymen conducted prayers ahead of the church council

Ahead of the meeting, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, called on religious and world leaders to protect believers and clergymen in Ukraine from what he called persecution.

What is the dispute all about?

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been under the Moscow Patriarchate for centuries.

But tensions within the church mounted after Ukraine became independent in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Before Sunday's council in Kiev, there were three Orthodox Church branches in Ukraine:

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kiev Patriarchate)

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)

The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church

Now, priests from the Kiev Patriarchate and the Autocephalous Church become members of the new church - the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

The drive for Ukrainian Orthodox independence intensified in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and Russia-backed separatists seized a big swathe of territory in eastern Ukraine.

The Moscow branch of the Ukrainian Church has denied being a tool of the Kremlin, and says it has tried to bring about peace in eastern Ukraine.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption St Sophia's Cathedral, pictured behind its huge bell tower, is one of Kiev's best known landmarks

Earlier this year, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople - seen as the first among equals in the world's Orthodoxy - overruled its decision dating back to 1686 to transfer its jurisdiction over Kievan Orthodox churches (known as the Kievan Metropolis) to Moscow.

Now Moscow fears losing many of its 12,000 parishes in Ukraine.

Constantinople holds sway over more than 300 million Orthodox Christians across the world.

The Russian Orthodox Church is by far the biggest.

Read more on related topics: </s> Ukrainian Orthodox leaders on Saturday approved the creation of a unified church independent of the Moscow Patriarchate and elected a leader to head the new church, officials said.

The leader of the new autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church will be Metropolitan Epiphanius, a 39-year-old bishop from the Kiev Patriarchate.

The vote, which was held Saturday at a closed-door synod in Kiev's St. Sophia Cathedral, is certain to anger authorities in Russia.

"God heard our appeals and gave us this anticipated unity," Epiphanius told a crowd of thousands who had gathered outside the cathedral. He stressed that the new church's doors would be open to all, and encouraged Ukrainians to rally behind it.

The newly formed community is now expected to receive independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Istanbul-based institution considered the so-called "first among equals" of leaders of the world's Orthodox Churches. It has already drafted a charter for an independent Ukrainian church.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has made the creation of a new church a key campaign issue, attended the synod as a non-voting observer.

"Ukraine was not, is not, and will not be the canonical territory of the Russian church," Poroshenko told the gathering of Orthodox officials on Saturday. He added that an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church was now a matter of national security.

"This is a question of Ukrainian statehood," Poroshenko said. "We are seizing spiritual independence, which can be likened to political independence. We are breaking the chains that tie us to the (Russian) empire."

Poroshenko said he would travel with Epiphanius to Istanbul in January to receive an official Tomos from the head of global Orthodoxy granting the new church independence.

Representatives of Ukraine's three Orthodox Churches attended the synod, but only two from the branch loyal to Moscow showed up.

The Russian Orthodox Church has protested vigorously against Kiev's attempts to create an independent church. One Russian bishop — Metropolitan Hilarion in Volokolamsk — on Saturday compared the two representatives of the Moscow-backed church to Judas.

A spokesman for Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, vowed Saturday that the Moscow Patriarchate will continue to work in Ukraine despite the creation of the new independent church.

The Russian Orthodox Church on Friday called on the United Nations, the leaders of Germany and France, the pope and other spiritual leaders to protect believers in Ukraine in the face of pressure on Moscow-affiliated clerics.

Ukrainian authorities have sought to portray Russian Orthodox priests in Ukraine as supporting Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, claims that the clerics have rejected.

As church tensions have grown, Ukraine's Security Service has searched Russian Orthodox churches in Ukraine and the homes of Russian Orthodox priests in several Ukrainian cities. The agency also has summoned dozens of priests in for questioning. </s> An independent Ukrainian Orthodox church was created at a signing ceremony in Turkey on Saturday, formalizing a split with the Russian church it had been tied to since 1686.

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, signed the “Tomos” in Istanbul in front of clerics and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, forming the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

It forces Ukrainian clerics to pick sides between the Moscow-backed Ukrainian churches and the new church as fighting persists in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed rebels.

“The pious Ukrainian people have awaited this blessed day for seven entire centuries,” Bartholomew I said in his address.

The patriarch, considered “first among equals” in Orthodox Christianity, said Ukrainians could now enjoy “the sacred gift of emancipation, independence and self-governance, becoming free from every external reliance and intervention.”

Poroshenko thanked Bartholomew I “for the courage to make this historic decision” and said that “among the 15 stars of the Orthodox churches of the world a Ukrainian star has appeared,” referring to the updated number of churches that don’t answer to an external authority.

Last month, Ukrainian Orthodox leaders approved the creation of a new, unified church split from the Moscow Patriarchate and elected 39-year-old Metropolitan Epiphanius I to lead it.

Bartholomew I’s decision in October to grant the Ukrainian church “autocephaly,” or independence, infuriated Moscow and the Russian church severed ties with Istanbul, the center of the Orthodox world.

Criticism continued Saturday when a spokesman for the Russia-affiliated church in Ukraine, Vasily Anisimov, said, “We consider these actions to be anti-canonical ... This action will not bring anything to Ukraine except trouble, separation and sin,” according to Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti.

Kiev has been pushing for a church free from Moscow’s influence, which intensified after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and amid the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Poroshenko, president since 2014, has pushed for the creation of the church as he campaigns for a March 31 election. Though the church is not formally part of the state, it is closely tied. Recent opinion polls suggest he is in second or third place in the race.

Poroshenko met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before the ceremony. </s> Ukraine elected the head of a newly unified Orthodox Church this weekend, a move that the nation's president hailed as an important safeguard against future Russian aggression.

The church aims for independence from the Russian Orthodox Church, and Saturday's election is just one step in a process that could take decades.

Nearly 200 bishops, priests and other church officials elected 39-year-old Metropolitan Epiphanius on Saturday as the Ukrainian church's head.

"Today is a truly historic event," Metropolitan Epiphanius said, according to The New York Times, "We were able to overcome various temptations, disagreements and unite in one church."

Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko, said the creation of an independent, national church is essential for national security because Russia is using churches in Ukraine as tools to spread propaganda and provide support for Russian fighters. Poroshenko is up for re-election next year, and critics argue his push for an autonomous church is a campaign ploy to bolster support.

On Saturday, quoting a national poet, Poroshenko said that "Ukraine will no longer drink Moscow poison from the Moscow cup," and called the election of the church's head "the final acquisition of independence from Russia," reports the Times.

The Times reports that Ukraine's split from the Russian Orthodox church threatens Moscow's "longstanding effort" to portray itself as the protector of all 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide. Ukraine's churches have been beholden to Moscow for centuries, and Russian President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, have "pursued a 'Russian World' alliance of states bound to Moscow by tradition, culture and religion." The Russian Orthodox Church could lose 30 to 40 percent of its 150 million-person membership in the split, according to the Times.

Russia has responded to attempts to create an independent, unified church in Ukraine with condemnation, comparing it to the great schism of 1054 that divided western and eastern Christianity.

The Kiev Patriarchate began after the collapse of the Soviet Union. "It favors European integration and champions an independent church but the Moscow Patriarchate denounces it as schismatic," reports Reuters.

Religious divisions in Ukraine deepened and support for the Kiev Patriarchate grew after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

"That which was created over hundreds of years was destroyed by Putin and his idiots in four years," Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition figure, wrote on Twitter. "Putin is the enemy of the Russian World."

In the run up to this weekend's election of an independent church leader, Ukrainian security services raided several Moscow-backed churches.

According to Reuters, Ukraine "worries Russia is using the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) to incite tensions as cover to invade."

"The deliberate instigation by the Russian special services of inter-church conflicts in Ukraine, to be combined with provoking direct acts of terrorism, may become a pretext for open military invasion by the Russian Federation's armed forces of our country," Vasyl Hrytsak, the chief of Ukraine's security service, said, according to Reuters.

The church split comes at a time of heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine. Last month, Russia seized three Ukrainian naval vessels and 24 soldiers and security officers traveling through the Kerch strait between Russia and disputed Crimea.

Over the weekend, the Times reported, "Ukrainian officials have been raising alarms about what they say is a huge buildup of Russian troops, tanks and artillery pieces along their border that could signal preparations for an invasion."

Epiphanius is scheduled to travel next month to Istanbul to receive an official order granting autonomy to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Istanbul is the historical seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and gave its backing to the establishment of an independent, unified Orthodox church in Ukraine last October. </s> ISTANBUL — The spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide recognized the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in a four-hour ceremony in Istanbul on Sunday, formalizing a split with the Russian church to which it had been tied for more than four centuries.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader, handed a Tomos containing a decree of independence to the newly appointed Metropolitan Epiphanius of Ukraine, cleaving millions of Ukrainians from the Russian Orthodox Church.

The independence effort outraged political and religious leaders in Russia. But for President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine, who stood before an elevated throne throughout the ceremony in Istanbul, the occasion was an affirmation of independence from Russian influence in his embattled country and a boost ahead of elections in March.

“Tomos for us is actually another act of proclaiming Ukraine’s independence,” Mr. Poroshenko said in an address posted on the presidency’s website. “For Ukrainians, our own Church is a guarantee of our spiritual freedom. This is the key to social harmony.” </s> Ukrainian Orthodox leaders on Saturday approved the creation of a unified church independent of the Moscow Patriarchate and elected a leader to head that new church — a move that could exponentially raise tensions with neighboring Russia.

The vote, held at a closed-door synod in Kiev's St. Sophia Cathedral, is the latest in a series of confrontations between Ukraine and authorities in Russia, including President Vladimir Putin's government. Ahead of the vote, the Russian Orthodox Church called on the United Nations, the leaders of Germany and France, the pope and other spiritual leaders to protect Orthodox believers in Ukraine.

The leader of the new autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church will be Metropolitan Epiphanius, a 39-year-old bishop from the Kiev Patriarchate.

"God heard our appeals and gave us this anticipated unity," Epiphanius told a crowd of thousands who had gathered outside the cathedral on Saturday to hear the news. He stressed that the new church's doors would be open to all, and encouraged Ukrainians to rally behind it.

Still spiritual leaders attending Saturday's synod couched their efforts to create an independent church in patriotic rhetoric. Father Sergei Dmitriev said — given Ukraine's ongoing conflicts with Russia — "we should have our own church, not an agent of the Kremlin in Ukraine."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has made the creation of a new church a key campaign issue, attended the synod Saturday as a non-voting observer.

"Ukraine was not, is not, and will not be the canonical territory of the Russian church," Poroshenko told the gathering, adding that creating an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church was now a matter of national security.

"This is a question of Ukrainian statehood," Poroshenko said. "We are seizing spiritual independence, which can be likened to political independence. We are breaking the chains that tie us to the (Russian) empire."

Representatives of Ukraine's three Orthodox Churches attended the synod in Kiev, but only two from the branch loyal to Moscow showed up. One Russian bishop — Metropolitan Hilarion in Volokolamsk — on Saturday compared those two representatives of the Moscow-backed church to Judas, the biblical betrayer of Jesus.

The newly formed community is expected to receive independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Istanbul-based institution considered the so-called "first among equals" of leaders of the world's Orthodox Churches.

Relations between Ukraine and Russia have been damaged by Russia's 2014 annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and its support for armed separatists fighting the government in eastern Ukraine. The church schism and a Nov. 25 naval clash in the Black Sea in which Russia seized three Ukrainian ships and detained 24 Ukrainian crewmen have caused them to deteriorate further.

Saturday's religious rupture from the Russian Orthodox Church is a potent — possibly explosive — mix of politics, religious faith and national identity.

Since the late 1600s, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine had been a wing of the Russian Orthodox Church rather than being ecclesiastically independent. Many Ukrainians, however, resented the implication that Ukraine was a vassal of Russia.

The move Saturday raises deep concerns about what will happen to the approximately 12,000 churches in Ukraine that were under the Moscow Patriarchate.

In recent years, about 50 churches in Ukraine under the Moscow Patriarchate have been forcibly seized and transferred to the Kiev Patriarchate, according to Metropolitan Antony Pakanich.

Poroshenko said Saturday he would travel with Epiphanius to Istanbul in January to receive a Tomos — an official document — from the head of global Orthodoxy that grants the new church independence.

The Ukrainian leader promised "to respect those who decide, for one reason or another," to remain with the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church — and also promised to protect those who choose to leave the Moscow Patriarchate and join the new church.

A spokesman for Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, vowed Saturday that the Moscow Patriarchate will continue to work in Ukraine despite the creation of the new independent church.

Ukrainian authorities have sought to portray Russian Orthodox priests in Ukraine as supporting Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, claims that the clerics have rejected.

Dmitriev, a Ukrainian army priest, was once loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate but changed his allegiance to the Kiev Patriarchate after the Russian-affiliated church began refusing to hold funerals for Ukrainian soldiers who died fighting in eastern Ukraine.

As church tensions have grown, Ukraine's Security Service has searched Russian Orthodox churches in Ukraine and the homes of Russian Orthodox priests in several Ukrainian cities. The agency also has summoned dozens of priests in for questioning.

Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who has from time to time exhibited nationalist sympathies, lashed out at Putin for Ukraine's bid for religious autonomy.

"What was forged over centuries was destroyed by Putin and his idiots in four years," Navalny wrote on Twitter. "Putin is an enemy of the Russian world." </s> The spiritual head of Orthodox Christians worldwide formally granted independence to the Ukrainian church on Saturday, marking an historic split from Russia which Ukrainian leaders see as vital to the country's security. The decree, granting "autocephaly," was signed by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at a service with the head of the Ukrainian church Metropolitan Epifaniy and President Petro Poroshenko in St George's Cathedral in Istanbul. "I want to thank the millions of Ukrainians around the world who responded to my appeal to pray for the church to be established," Poroshenko said at a ceremony accompanied by solemn liturgical singing. "I want to thank the generations of Ukrainians who dreamed...and finally God sent us the Orthodox Church of Ukraine," he told the congregation in the crowded church. The patriarchate, the seat of the spiritual leader of some 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, endorsed Ukraine's request for the new church in October. The decree, or Tomos, will be handed to Epifaniy at a ceremony on Sunday, completing the process of recognition by the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

The new church may boost pro-Western leader Poroshenko, who lobbied hard for its creation and faces a tight election race in March. Russia bitterly opposes the split, comparing it to the Great Schism of 1054 that divided western and eastern Christianity. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill made a last-ditch appeal against the process last month. "Huge win for Ukraine, defeat for the Kremlin," economist Timothy Ash wrote on Twitter. "[It] will make Moscow's hope of some future pull of Ukraine back into its 'orbit' nigh on impossible without the use of overwhelming [catastrophic] military force." Religious divisions deepened in Ukraine after 2014 and two Orthodox factions vie for dominance. The church known as the Moscow Patriarchate, aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church, sees itself as the only legitimate church in Ukraine. On Dec. 20, Ukrainian MPs passed a law that could force the church to add "Russian" to its name. The rival Kiev Patriarchate was born after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its popularity has grown since 2014. It favours European integration and championed the independent church but the Moscow Patriarchate denounces it as schismatic.

Ukraine last month chose 39-year-old Epifaniy to head the new church, in a move which Poroshenko compared to Ukraine's referendum for independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The move incensed Moscow, and prompted President Vladimir Putin to warn of possible bloodshed in his annual news conference. Relations between Ukraine and Russia collapsed after Moscow's seizure of Crimea in 2014. Ukraine imposed martial law in November, citing the threat of a full-scale invasion after Russia captured three of its vessels in the Kerch Strait. The Ukrainian Orthodox church has been beholden to Moscow for hundreds of years, and Ukraine's leaders see church independence as vital to tackling Russian meddling. Kiev says Moscow-backed churches on its soil are a Kremlin tool to spread propaganda and support fighters in the eastern Donbass region in a conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people. The churches strongly deny this. "Tomos - is just a paper, the result of restless political and personal ambitions. It was signed in breach of canonicity and this is why it has no power", Vladimir Legoida, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Synodal Department for Church-Society and Media Relations, posted in Telegram messenger. Epifaniy was chosen by a council at the St Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, built by the son of Prince Volodymyr whose baptism in 988 led to the spread of Christianity in the region. </s> ISTANBUL (AP) — The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has presented a decree of independence to the Metropolitan bishop of the nascent Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

In Istanbul on Sunday, Patriarch Bartholomew I presented the Tomos, a scroll containing the decree, in a symbolic ceremony sanctifying the Ukrainian church's independence from the Russian Orthodox Church. He signed the decree on Saturday.

The decision to split from the Moscow Patriarchate after more than three centuries of ties has angered Russia. The Russian church has severed ties with Istanbul, the center of the Orthodox world.

Metropolitan Epiphanius I, who was elected last month by Ukrainian Orthodox leaders to head the new church, will take the decree to Kiev.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has campaigned for the new church, is attending the two-day ceremony. </s> Ukraine on Saturday formally created a new national Orthodox church, breaking away from Russia's influence, as worsening political and military tensions between the two neighbors spills over to religion.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko confirmed the decision following a historic synod at Kyiv's Saint Sophia Cathedral when the country's Orthodox Council voted to establish the independent church.

Poroshenko added that Metropolitan Epifany, of the Kiev Patriarchate church, was chosen as head of the new church: "This day will go down in history as the sacred day ... the day of the final independence from Russia," Poroshenko told a crowd awaiting the council's decision in central Kiev.

Several thousand people had rallied outside the cathedral ahead of the synod in support of the move, which the Ukrainian president pushed for as part of his 2019 re-election campaign.

Read more: What is the Orthodox Church?

Attending Saturday's synod as a non-voting observer, Poroshenko told senior priests that the new church was "a question of our Ukrainian national security, of our statehood."

Read more: Politics, powers, and struggle over Ukraine's Orthodox church

The founding of a new Ukrainian Orthodox church had been in the works since Russia's 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea following a pro-Western uprising in Kyiv.

Moscow has also been widely accused of backing pro-Russian separatists battling the Ukrainian military in eastern Ukraine, a conflict that has killed 10,000 people, according to United Nations estimates.

A fresh crisis, last month, that saw Russia seize three Ukrainian navy ships and arrest 24 sailors in the waters around Crimea sent relations to new lows.

The church's establishment received a boost in October when the spiritual leader of the global Orthodox Church — Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople — recognized Ukraine's independence from the Russian Orthodox Church.

In doing so, he revoked a 332-year-old ruling that had placed Ukraine under the Patriarchate of Moscow. That decision led the Russian Orthodox Church to break off all ties with Constantinople, fearing that Kyiv would force Moscow-loyal churches and monasteries into its control.

The Constantinople Patriarchate's leaders — based in Istanbul, Turkey — are widely considered to be the most influential in the global Orthodox hierarchy, which boasts some 300 million followers.

Around half of them, however, are aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church, which is considered to have close ties to the Russian state, especially under President Vladimir Putin's leadership.

Read more: Greece's Orthodox Church and state consider divorce

Despite the support of three Ukrainian church branches, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine of the Moscow Patriarchate — which comprises most priests, churches, and monasteries, has boycotted the meeting and has recommitted itself to Moscow's dominion. The Russian Orthodox Church still considers Ukraine its territory.

If the attempt to create a unified Ukrainian Church is successful, it would be among the largest in the Orthodox world in terms of numbers of believers. Some 67 percent of Ukraine's 45 million population adheres to one or more strands of Orthodox Christianity.

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President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko declares the establishment of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, a new branch of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, separate from the Russian Orthodox Church, after Ukrainian clergy elected Metropolitan Epiphanius I as the head of the new church.