On March 20, 2026, Filaret (Mykhailo Denysenko) died in Kyiv. He was one of the most influential and controversial figures in Ukrainian Orthodoxy, with a career spanning the late Soviet period, the collapse of the USSR, and Ukraine’s struggle for church independence.
Born on January 23, 1929 in what is now the Donetsk region, he rose through the ranks of the Russian Orthodox Church, briefly led it in 1990 as locum tenens, and after Ukraine declared independence became the leading advocate of autocephaly. In 1992, after breaking with Moscow, he created the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, and in 1995 he was elected its patriarch.
In 2018, Constantinople declared invalid the anathema imposed on Filaret by the Russian Orthodox Church, and after the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine he received the title of honorary patriarch. But in 2019 he effectively left the OCU, accused Metropolitan Epifaniy of violating agreements, and tried to restore the UOC-KP.
In his final years he was more a symbolic figure than an active church politician. According to sources cited by Novaya Gazeta Europe, after his death police guarded St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral and his residence on Chykalenko Street. His supporters failed to convene a synod, while control over the official website of his structure passed to OCU representatives.
Filaret’s body was taken to St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery despite a will he signed in 2025 forbidding OCU bishops from conducting his funeral service. At the same time, in early 2026 relatives brought him to meet Epifaniy in an attempt at reconciliation.
Sources say part of the small UOC-KP circle is unwilling to accept that the late patriarch’s cause and property are passing under the control of former rivals. But it has virtually no resources to retain the cathedral, residence, or finances. In practical terms, the Kyiv Patriarchate project ended with its founder.