Vasyl Lypkivsky was born in the village of Popudnya in the Kyiv Governorate (now Cherkasy Oblast), where his father was a priest.

Because of his participation in the Ukrainian ecclesiastic movement, he was removed from his position in 1905 and transferred to the parish of Kyiv-Solomenka in the capacity of prior.

For the time being, an unstructured association in favor of ending ties with the Russian church was gaining ground among the Ukrainian Orthodox faithful.

The move for autonomy from Russia led to the assertion of Ukrainian autocephaly at the First All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Council on 23 October 1921.

However, by early 1924 the new church had 30 bishops and approximately 1,500 priests and deacons serving in nearly 1,100 parishes in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with possibly as many as six million faithful.

[1] Under threat of Soviet repression, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church dissolved itself and accepted incorporation into the Russian-dominated Moscow Patriarchate in 1930.