Patriarch Kirill hopes to go to Kyiv again some time

“I strongly hope that such time will come, when we all will pray at the Kyiv Lavra of the Caves together,” the Patriarch said on Monday when addressing Metropolitan Onufry of Kyiv and All Ukraine who attended the Holy Synod in St. Petersburg.

Patriarch Kirill congratulated Metropolitan Onufry on Angel’s Day.

“We prayed for you on this day. I regretted I did not have the opportunity to be in Kiev,” Patriarch Kirill said.

The Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia presented Metropolitan Onufry with a panagia dedicated to the 1000th anniversary of the death of Saint Prince Volodymyr, who christened Rus.

Some experts say that the Patriarch of Moscow laid the intellectual groundwork for Russia’s incursion into Ukraine with his concept of "Russian world".

"The Church, for its part, acts as the Russian state’s soft power arm, exerting its authority in ways that assist the Kremlin in spreading Russian influence both in Russia’s immediate neighborhood as well as around the globe", says in his article in Forbes Paul Coyer.