On 20 August 2018, the pro-Moscow anonymous site "Union of Orthodox Journalists" analysed the Ecumenical Patriarchate's claim of jurisdiction over Ukraine and concluded the See of Kyiv had been transferred to the Patriarchate of Moscow. They added that even if the Ecumenical Patriarchate decided to abrogate the 1686 transfer, the territory covered in 1686 by the See of Kyiv's territory was "a far cry from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of today" and covered less than half of Ukraine's current territory. In its 15 October 2018 official statement, the Russian Orthodox Church gave counterarguments to the Ecumenical Patriarch's arguments. Metropolitan Hilarion, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations, declared in an interview that Constantinople's plan to "grant Autocephaly to a part of the Russian Orthodox Church [...] that once was subordinate to Constantinople [...] runs counter to historic truth". His argument is that the entire territory of Ukraine has not been under Constantinople's jurisdiction for 300 years because the Kiev metropolis that was incorporated into the Moscow Patriarchate in 1686 was much smaller (it did not include Donbass, Odessa and some other regions) and therefore does not coincide with the present-day territory of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. A similar argument was given on 13 November in a live phone interview to Radio Liberty by the Head of the Information and Education Department of the UOC-MP, Archbishop Clement. Archbishop Clement of the UOC-MP considers that "to revoke the letter on the transfer of the Kiev Metropolis in 1686 is the same as to cancel the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils of the 4th or 7th centuries." On 8 November 2018, the "Union of Orthodox Journalists" analyzed the same documents as "The Ecumenical Throne and the Ukrainian Church" (the "Patriarchal and Synodal "Act" or "Letter of Issue" of 1686" and the 1686 "Patriarchal Letter to the Kings of Russia)" and again concluded that the See of Kiev had been "completely transferred to the jurisdiction of the Russian Church in 1686". The possibility of a pan-Orthodox synaxis (consultative assembly or conference) has been raised before and after the official break of communion. On 29 September 2018, , the press secretary of the Patriarch of Moscow, declared that the local Orthodox churches may initiate a pan-Orthodox Synaxis on the issue of granting autocephaly to the Church in Ukraine, however the problem was that the convening such a synaxis is "a prerogative of the First among the Equals, that is, the Ecumenical Patriarch".