Good morning. We'll get the live blog started with this item from our news desk on meeting between Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual head of the worldwide Orthodox Church in Istanbul, and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, which could have major ramifications for Ukraine:
Orthodox Church Heads Discuss Ukraine Bid To Split With Russia
The spiritual head of the worldwide Orthodox Church in Istanbul has hosted Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill for talks on Ukraine's bid to split from the Russian church, in a move strongly opposed by Moscow.
The meeting was hosted on August 31 by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is also known as the Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and the Ecumenical Patriarch. Bartholomew is regarded as the "first among equals" of the world's estimated 300 million Orthodox Christian believers.
He is expected to rule in coming months on a Ukrainian appeal to cut spiritual ties with Moscow. But Kirill, who has strong connections with the Kremlin and is seen as an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is determined to prevent this from happening.
The church's decision is being made after four years of conflict between Kyiv and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,300 people and prompted many Ukrainians to turn away from the Moscow church.
The Metropolitan Emmanuel of France, who was present at the meeting between Bartholomew and Kirill, said afterwards that the main question they discussed was the "situation in Ukraine."
Emmanuel said that Bartholomew informed Kirill that he decided in April to begin "exploring all the ways in order to issue the autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church."
"We are implementing already this decision, and this was also reported to Patriarch Kirill," Emmanuel said.
Emmanuel told AP that the final step of granting Ukrainian clerics full ecclesiastic independence has not as yet been reached, but he said that the process of reaching that point is now under way and "there's no going backwards."
Were Moscow to lose control of the Ukrainian church, it would be seen as a blow to the prestige of the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian influence in general.
The Associated Press reported this week that the Kremlin apparently is so concerned about the possibility of a split with the Ukrainian church that Russian intelligence operatives have been spying on Bartholomew's top aides for years.
Kyiv on August 31 hailed the Istanbul talks as "historic."
"It seems that our fair aspiration to receive autocephaly and the support of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew forced the Russian Orthodox Church to...begin a dialogue with Constantinople," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin wrote on Facebook.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has pushed for the Kyiv church to break away from Moscow, but he has said it is up to the clerics to decide.
Bartholomew is the primus inter pares (first among equals) of Orthodox churches across the world, including Greek, Russian, Serbian, and Romanian. His degree of influence varies, but many consider him to be the the spiritual head of the entire Orthodox faith.
His term in office has been marked by rocky relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, which has not always conceded that he is the spiritual leader of Orthodox believers.
After Bartholomew's meeting with Kirill, Russian news agencies quoted Russian church officials as dismissing reports that a split with Ukraine is now under way.
The TASS state-run news agency quoted Kirill as saying that "the organization of the Orthodox churches is such that not one church can make a decision that contradicts the position of the other churches. Therefore we are simply programmed for cooperation."
With reporting by AP, AFP, and TASS
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Friday, August 31, 2018. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage.
Separatist Leader Zakharchenko Was A Thorn In the Side Of Both Kyiv And Moscow
By Christopher Miller
He was a local boy from coal-dusted Donetsk who grew up to be a mine engineer. Aleksandr Zakharchenko quit that life to become a separatist warlord whose Russia-backed insurgents carved out a “republic” roughly the size of the state of Delaware.
On August 31, a bomb ripped through a popular Donetsk cafe, killing Zakharchenko as he dined with several others. The cafe where he was dining was called Sepa, or Separatist. He was survived by a wife and four sons.
The killing was at least the ninth targeted assassination of a senior Ukrainian separatist figure in the nongovernment-controlled territories of Donetsk and Luhansk since the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists broke out in April 2014.
More than 10,300 people have been killed in the conflict, including those separatists. More than 1 million people have fled.
Zakharchenko, 42, graduated from a local technical college and studied at the Interior Ministry’s law institute before landing a job as an engineer in one of the region's many mines, according to Russian state media.
He rose to the leadership of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic on August 8, 2014, with full-scale fighting under way through the region. He replaced Aleksandr Borodai, a Russian citizen from Moscow with close ties to the Kremlin, in a thinly veiled attempt by the Kremlin to show a semblance of self-government on the part of the separatist “republic.”
Three months later, Zakharchenko won an election that was meant to cement his rule but which was viewed by Kyiv and the West as a sham.
Brutal, unruly, and divisive, Zakharchenko was never fully accepted, not even by his own separatist supporters.
He always carried a loaded sidearm and traveled with security and was never comfortable leading the government, known by its acronym, the DNR. He preferred camouflage fatigues and front-line trenches to a suit and tie in a stuffy office or appearing in front of TV cameras.
Kyiv despised him because he had Ukrainian blood on his hands and was notorious for using torture on Ukrainian prisoners of war. Moscow kept him on a short leash because he wanted more autonomy than it was willing to give him.
Still, he was little more than a figurehead, since Moscow had run the show in the so-called separatist republics from the very beginning -- as shown by an overwhelming amount of evidence compiled by journalists, Kyiv, and Western intelligence agencies.
In one instance illustrating this, as the conflict flared in January 2015, Zakharchenko announced a large-scale offensive aimed at capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol. Two hours later, he walked back the order in a rushed press conference that had just one Russia state news outlet present.
At the time, sources in Donetsk told RFE/RL that he had received a call from Moscow shortly after his announcement.
Zakharchenko was twice wounded on the battlefield: once in the arm during a battle in July 2014 and a second time in the leg during a fight in February 2015. He underwent several surgeries and never fully recovered from the leg wound. Some reports indicated the wound had flared up again in the months before his death, sidelining him for several weeks.
In July 2015, on the first anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, he appeared in the village of Hrabove, where much of the plane’s wreckage had fallen. All 298 people on board the jet died.
Zakharchenko wore a leg brace and leaned heavily on a cane for support as he hobbled to a memorial plaque. Despite overwhelming evidence showing that the missile that downed the jet was transported from Russia and fired from territory under his control, he repeated Russian propaganda and blamed the downing on Kyiv.
There had long been rumors that Zakharchenko would be replaced. Much of that stemmed from his insubordination but also from the difficulties local residents endured, not least of which was actual war. But there was also the dire economic situation and an unpopular curfew.
One of the leading contenders to replace him is Denis Pushilin, another Donetsk native who was involved in a notorious Ponzi scheme in Russia before joining the separatists’ ranks. For now, however, the DNR government appointed as its acting head Dmitry Trapeznikov, who previously was the deputy chief of the DNR cabinet and reportedly worked for the Donetsk Shakhtar soccer club before the war.
In the immediate aftermath of Zakharchenko’s death, Kyiv and Moscow traded blame. Russia blamed Ukrainian security agents; Ukraine blamed internal rivalries, or even criminal groups.
The separatists’ deputy defense minister, Eduard Basurin, claimed -- without any evidence -- that the United States “was directly involved” in killing Zakharchenko, Russia’s state-run Sputnik news agency reported.
In comments to Bloomberg, another notorious former fighter, Igor Girkin, summed up the theories surrounding the killing.
“He could have been taken out because of criminal schemes or maybe his Kremlin curators grew tired of him or the Ukrainians may have done it,” said Girkin, a former militia commander who was favored by the Kremlin before his maverick ways became too costly. “He was a problem for everyone.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has rarely even mentioned Zakharchenko by name, sent his condolences to Zakharchenko’s family shortly after his death was confirmed.
He “was a true people’s leader, a brave and resolute person, a patriot of Donbas,” he said in a statement posted on the Kremlin’s website. “In a difficult time for his native land, he stood up for his defense, took on a huge personal responsibility, led the people.”
The Ukrainian response was much more critical. The country’s main security agency, the SBU, immediately denied responsibility.
In some cases, the response from Ukrainians was darkly comical.
“We’ll have to go to TripAdvisor and leave a review about” the bombed cafe, Taras Berezovets, a Ukrainian political analyst and TV host, said in a post to Twitter. “The [dumplings] are simply the bomb!”
Washington Operative Who Lobbied For Ukrainian Party Charged With Foreign-Agent Violation
By Mike Eckel
WASHINGTON – Samuel Patten, a longtime Washington operative and associate of a Russian-Ukrainian man indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has been charged with failing to register as a foreign agent in the United States.
The U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia said in a criminal complaint filed on August 31 that Patten worked on behalf of the Ukrainian political party Opposition Bloc between 2014 and 2018, without disclosing the work to the U.S. government as required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
News reports said he entered a guilty plea at his initial appearance at D.C. federal court on August 31. Reuters reported that he also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Earlier this week, he declined an interview request from RFE/RL.
Notably, the charges were not brought by Mueller, whose sweeping investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election resulted in the conviction earlier this month of Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump.
Manafort was convicted by a federal jury in Virginia on tax and bank fraud stemming from his work between 2010 and 2014 for the pro-Russia Ukrainian political party Party of Regions and then-President Viktor Yanukovych.