The biggest event of the year that nobody's talking about.
In response the War in Donbass and the annexation of the Crimea, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has asked the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (the highest authority in Eastern Orthodoxy) for autocephalous status.
This request was granted. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is now recognized as being independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. In response, the Russian Orthodox Church has severed ties with Constantinople.
That is, Russia has excommunicated itself from the global Eastern Orthodox community (though it's possible that this situation could be resolved soon). There are two ways of looking at this:
1. This is a good thing for the West. Russia's just suffered a majority propaganda loss; the Eastern Orthodox populations of Georgia, Serbia, Belarus, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, and so on might have in the past seen Russia as the protector of Orthodoxy. However, now that Russia is cut off from such, this might spur them to keep away from Russia and find new partners.
2. This is a bad thing for the West. Moscow is trying to assert its dominance over Constantinople and thus over all of Eastern Orthodoxy, something that it last tried with limited success from 1448-1589. Should he succeed, the gains for Putin would be massive.
