The head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP) made the following comment to the Ukrainian Weekly on the visit of Patriarch Kirill:
"This visit of Patriarch Kirill is aimed on the one hand to limit the independence of the UOC-MP [Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate] and on the other hand to influence the spiritual condition of Ukrainians in order for them to come closer to Moscow. However, he will undoubtedly stress that his visit to Ukraine is purely pastoral. We do not protest against a pastoral visit.  It is the right of every patriarch to visit his faithful. But even the Russian political analysts evaluated the previous visit of Kirill as political and wrote that he is primarily a politician and diplomat and then the patriarch.

“We can see that almost all the addresses of Patriarch Kirill on Ukraine are of political character. He has now brought forth an idea of the ‘Russian World’ which was passed at the World Russian People's Council. According to Patriarch Kirill, the Russian world is Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. Well, it is understandable about the first three as they are Slavic countries. But what does Moldova have to do with the Russian world? Nothing. But as the metropolitanate in Moldova is part of the Moscow Patriarchate, of course, he included them also in the Russian world. That is it is a political project, which is attractively called the Russian World, but in reality it is about the revival of the Russian Empire. Patriarch Kirill is coming exactly to establish this idea.

“One should also note that both the secular and church press publish reports of dissatisfaction with what is happening in the UOC-MP. With the fact that correspondence within the church is conducted in Ukrainian and not in Russian and that some parishes serve services in Ukrainian, that some priests, bishops, say sermons in Ukrainian.”