Church leaders meet amid power struggle:
By Current Time
KYIV -- Top figures in Ukraine's new Orthodox Church are meeting in a synod amid an apparent power struggle between Patriarch Filaret, an early vocal supporter of the independent Ukrainian church, and the new church's elected head, Metropolitan Epifaniy.
Patriarch Filaret, 90, has said that he should govern the new church that got its independence from the Moscow Patriarchate earlier this year, while Metropolitan Epiphany, 40, should represent it internationally.
According to Filaret, that was agreed between him, Epifaniy, and then-President Petro Poroshenko in December 2018.
Epifaniy has accused Filaret of trying to rule the church on his own, contradicting, according to Epifaniy, agreements reached in October when Ukraine secured approval from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople -- the spiritual head of Orthodox Christianity -- to set up an independent Orthodox church.
According to Epifaniy, who was officially installed as the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine's first metropolitan in February, the church must be ruled collectively.
Ukraine's move to obtain independence from the Moscow Patriarchate was fiercely opposed by Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church, under which many Orthodox parishes in Ukraine have pledged allegiance to for centuries.
Bartholomew handed over a document establishing the Ukrainian church's independence, known as a "tomos," to Epifaniy at a ceremony in Istanbul on January 6.
PrivatBank sues Kolomoyskiy in U.S. court:
By Todd Prince
A major Ukrainian bank at the center of a scandal involving a powerful, politically connected billionaire has sued its former oligarch owners in U.S. court, amid a battle for control that could affect relations with Western lending institutions.
PrivatBank, which was nationalized by Ukraine three years ago, filed the lawsuit on May 21 in Delaware state court against Ihor Kolomoyskiy and Hennadiy Boholyubov.
The suit was filed one day after Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was sworn into office.
Zelenskiy is linked to Kolomoyskiy through the oligarch's ownership of the TV station that hosted a comedy program in which Zelenskiy starred. Zelenskiy has also appointed a lawyer for Kolomoyskiy to be his chief of staff.
Kolomoyskiy, who had been living in self-imposed exile for almost two years, returned to Ukraine following Zelenskiy's election on April 21.
The lawsuit comes as Kolomoyskiy seeks to regain control of the bank he helped found in 1992. The National Bank of Ukraine nationalized it in 2016 under then-President Petro Poroshenko and regulators later injected roughly $6 billion of Ukrainian taxpayer money to prevent its collapse.
A Ukrainian court ruled last month that the nationalization was illegal, boosting the chances that Kolomoyskiy could once regain control of the bank.
The lawsuit filed in Delaware Chancery Court accusеs the two Ukrainians, as well as three residents of Miami, Florida, of fraud and money laundering that nearly destroyed the lender, according to court records.
PrivatBank accused Kolomoyskiy and Boholyubov of lending money to companies they controlled and later laundering it through Delaware entities to acquire assets in the United States, including property and metals companies.
The two men "used PrivatBank as their own personal piggy bank -- ultimately stealing billions of dollars from PrivatBank and using United States entities to launder hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of PrivatBank's misappropriated loan proceeds into the United States to enrich themselves and their co-conspirators," the lawsuit says.
Kolomoyskiy and Boholyubov could not be immediately reached for comment.
Zelenskiy's ties to Kolomoyskiy have raised concerns that, as president, he might be partial to the tycoon's business interests.
During the election campaign, Zelenskiy denied he would seek to hand the bank back to Kolomoyskiy, a move that would damage relations with the International Monetary Fund.
The fund has loaned Ukraine billions of dollars over the past five years, but has made much of the lending contingent on Ukrainian leaders doing more to clean up the country's endemic corruption.
Last month, the fund urged Ukraine to continue efforts to recover losses from failed banks, including PrivatBank, from former owners and said that it was "closely monitoring developments in this area.''
The Washington-based fund declined to comment on the lawsuit.
We are now closing the live blog for today, but we'll be back again tomorrow morning to follow all the latest developments. Until then, you can keep up with all our other ongoing Ukraine coverage here.