Ukrainian President Pedro Poroshenko | Tatyana Zenkovich/EPA Russian Orthodox Church a ‘national security threat’ to Ukraine, says president Petro Poroshenko said the Russian church was separated from the state ‘only on paper.’

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko on Saturday called the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church a national security threat.

At a ceremony marking the country's conversion to Christianity 1,030 years ago, AFP reported that the Ukrainian leader said that the Russian church's sway among Ukrainian believers is a "direct threat to the national security of Ukraine." The head of state also added that "this obliges us to act."

There are two branches of the Orthodox Church active in Ukraine: the Russian church and its Ukrainian cousin. The former, whose clerics are loyal to the patriarch in Moscow, has the most adherents, according to the report. The Ukrainian church and its patriarch are based in Kiev.

"I believe it is absolutely necessary to cut off all the tentacles with which the aggressor country operates inside the body of our state," said Poroshenko, speaking about the Russian church.

He said that the religious body is "separated from the state only on paper" while it "fully and unconditionally supports the Kremlin's revanchist imperial policy."

Poroshenko's remarks came at an event in Kiev attended by tens of thousands of followers.

The conflict in Ukraine has driven a further wedge between the Russian and Ukrainian branches of Orthodox Christianity. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church supported the popular demonstrations that led to the fall of a Russia-backed government in 2014.

Patriarch Kirill, who oversees the Russian Orthodox Church, is close to Russia's President Vladimir Putin. At a similar procession on Friday, he prayed for peace in the eastern part of Ukraine and said the Kiev branch should not pull too far away from Moscow as it could "lead to a catastrophe."