[2][3] On 15 December 2018, at the unification council of the Eastern Orthodox churches of Ukraine, the UAOC and the UOC-KP, along with metropolitans from the UOC-MP, unified into the OCU.

Monastic life flourished, including in the famous Kyiv Monastery of the Caves, through the efforts of St. Anthony of Kiev, known as the father of Russian monasticism.

As Vladimir-Suzdal, and later the Grand Duchy of Moscow continued to grow unhindered, the Orthodox religious link between them and Kyiv remained strong.

The fall of Constantinople in 1453, allowed the once daughter church of North East, to become autocephalous, with Kyiv remaining part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

The latter became central in the growing Russian Tsardom, attaining patriarchate in 1589, whilst the former became subject to repression and Polonization efforts, particularly after the Union of Brest in 1596.

[5] An appeal was approved, which called for the formation of regional committees for the revival of the UAOC and to begin commemorating the Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios I at divine services.

Recalling the long-term captivity and lack of rights of the Ukrainian Church under the rule of Moscow, the five founders of the committee expressed and substantiated the demand for the restoration of full autocephaly.

On February 27, 1989, a group of Lviv priests of the Russian Orthodox Church appealed to Metropolitan Philaret (Denysenko) with a statement about the need to obtain autocephaly for the Ukrainian Exarchate.

[5] Archpriest Volodymyr Yarema, parson of the Peter and Paul Parish in Lviv, signed the statement on behalf of like-minded people.

However, strict sanctions against the authors of the letter were not applied due to the difficult situation in the diocese, where it became obvious that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church would soon come out of the underground.

The Russian Orthodox Church Lviv Metropolitan Nicodemus (Rusnak) (1921-2011), previously expelled from Argentina for espionage for the Soviet Union,[5] was ready to support efforts to obtain autocephaly on the condition that local Greek Catholics, who had begun to emerge from the underground, join the newly forming Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

[5] The collection of signatures for the application in the name of the Commissioner for Religious Confessions at the Lviv Regional Executive Committee, Yuliyan Reshetyl, was completed.

[5] On October 22, 1989, the freelance bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, Ioan Bodnarchuk, arrived in Lviv at the invitation of the clergy to lead the communities that had transferred to the UAOC.

Although used for regular liturgical services of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, the edifice had previously been a part of the historical park "Sofia-Kyiv."

[6] On 11 October 2018, after a regular synod, the Patriarchate of Constantinople renewed an earlier decision to move towards granting autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

This period lasted till the return of the Red Army in 1944, after that the UAOC was forced to emigration for a second time due to persecutions by the Soviet regime and remained structured only in the Ukrainian diaspora.