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KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president on Thursday hailed the announcement by Orthodoxy’s Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople that it will move forward with granting Ukrainian clerics independence from the Russian Orthodox Church, while the Russian church denounced the decision.

The Istanbul-based patriarchate, whose head Bartholomew I is considered the “first among equals” of Orthodox church leaders, said it was removing its condemnation of leaders of schismatic Orthodox churches in Ukraine, a step toward establishing an ecclesiastically independent — or autocephalous — church in Ukraine.

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Since the late 1600s, the church in Ukraine has been formally under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church.

President Petro Poroshenko has pushed for the church in Ukraine to be independent.

“For us, our own church is a guarantee of our spiritual freedom,” Poroshenko said. “I guarantee that the Ukrainian state will respect the choice of those who decide to stay in church structures retaining unity with the Russian Orthodox Church.”