Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has said that the country needs a unified Ukrainian Orthodox church, but the state will not intervene and put pressure on the Church in this matter.

"I, as president and head of state, assure you that the government will not resort to any forceful steps and will put no pressure. We need to guard religious peace as the apple of our eye," he said at a meeting of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations on Saint Volodymyr Hill in Kyiv.

Poroshenko stressed that overcoming the split in Ukrainian Orthodoxy should be a matter primarily for believers.