Three Russian sailors and one of their Ukrainian counterparts have told Sputnik that their pirate captors denied them food during their five months of captivity in Equatorial Guinea

The Turkish government shows disregard towards Byzantine and Christian cultural heritage and fails to fulfill its promise to maintain free access to Hagia Sophia, Nikolay Balashov, an archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church, told Sputnik on Friday, addressing Ankara's latest decision to convert another former church into a mosque

Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III has offered to convene a pan-Orthodox meeting in Jordan in February to discuss the current situation in the Orthodox world, the deputy head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate told Sputnik

The Church of Greece has granted Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Ieronymos II the right to make decisions regarding the issue of autocephaly of the non-canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP), as well as recognized the right of the Patriarch of Constantinople to grant the tomos of autocephaly to the UOC-KP, Metropolitan Hierotheos said on Saturday

Kiev authorities pursued the drive for a further rift in relations with Moscow this year by pushing for a Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent from the Moscow Patriarchate, and secured the support of Constantinople, ignoring the possibility of a massive split among the believers.

The canonical value of the so-called unification council held in Ukraine earlier on Saturday is insignificant, and Constantinople now has a serious task to explain to the heads of local Orthodox churches why those who were recently considered schismatics should be now treated as clerics with same rights, the deputy chair of the Moscow Patriarchate's External Church Relations Department, Archpriest Nikolai Balashov, said on Saturday.

Kiev authorities pursued the drive for a further rift in relations with Moscow this year by pushing for a Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent from the Moscow Patriarchate, and secured the support of Constantinople, ignoring the possibility of a massive split among the believers.