One wonders if His Eminence, Archbishop Yuri was looking for any way to get away from Patriarch Filaret, albeit a rather foolish and stupid way, in my opinion.
Well, it's hard to say. Back in 2001, Vl. Yuriy gave an interview to the Ukrayins'ke Pravoslav"ja newspaper where he blasted the late Patriarch Alexiy II for creating obstacles for the Ukrainian Orthodoxy "not in the ecclesiological but merely political sense" and for his (Patr. Alexij's) attempts to eliminate "our Prelate, His Holiness Patriarch Filaret" (
http://www.cerkva.info/2008/12/01/podvijnij_Yurij.html). A few years later, after the US invasion in Iraq, Vl. Yuriy befriended a local Donetsk-based mogul-businessman who had business connectios with Kurdish oil people, and began to frequent social gatherings of local Donetsk-based folks of the Assyrian ancestry who had relatives in Kurdistan. He was planning a trip to Kurdistan and allegedly had plans for some sort of business venture there, but, to his dismay, that local mogul suddenly severed all ties with him (
http://www.cerkva.info/2008/12/03/Yurij_v_MP.html). That triggered the letter, written by Vl. Yuriy, to K. Mardinha IV, the prelate of the Assyrian (Nestorian) church, asking to admit him in an eucharistic union with the Assyrian church and to help him with his trip to Kurdish regions of Iraq, to which the Nestorian prelate replied negatively, and sent a copy of his reply to Filaret. From that point on, the "bad blood" between Vl. Yuriy and Patr. Filaret began to boil, and finally, a year ago or so, they stopped communicating.
