February 1, 2025

Dear Brother Archons and Friends of the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,

Chatham House, a British think tank and policy institute with the mission of helping “governments and societies build a sustainably secure, prosperous, and just world,” has produced an illuminating and informative video that brings a wealth of information and marvelous clarity to the ongoing controversy over the Church in Ukraine.

The video, entitled “The Orthodox Battlefield,” features Metropolitan Yevstratiy of Bila Tserkva, Deputy Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, to which His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew granted autocephaly in January 2019. Also featured are Lucy Ash, author of the informative book The Baton and the Cross: Russia’s Church from Pagans to Putin, and Ihor Bandura, Deputy Head of the Baptist Union of Ukraine. Chairing the discussion is Orysia Lutsevych, who is the Head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House.

Please take the time to watch the entire presentation, but if you are pressed for time, please be sure to watch the first twenty minutes, for it provides an exquisite explanation of the history of Christianity in Ukraine and Russia, explaining how our Holy Faith was brought to Kyiv from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, and hundreds of years later from Kyiv to Moscow. This offers a much-needed historical perspective that illuminates aspects of the current controversy it that are often overlooked.

You’ll find this video to be a vital resource to aid you to show people the wisdom of the actions of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew regarding the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

Yours in the service of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,

Anthony J. Limberakis, MD
Archon Megas Aktouarios
National Commander