I am a convert to Orthodoxy and am trying to educate myself on various aspects of the Orthodox community. I have a few questions I am hoping you can help me answer:

What is the difference between the Ukrainian Orthodox church and the Russian Orthodox church? Are they different linguistically or liturgically? Do they have different historical roots? Why do some Russians from the Ukraine say they are Russian while others say they are Ukrainian and from the Ukraine?

The Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches both share the same Orthodox faith and praxis.

The Kyivan Church of St Andrew and St Volodymyr the Great is the Mother to the Churches of the Eastern Slavs and the Light of Eastern Europe.

The Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Rus' once held sway, in terms of jurisdiction, over what was five times the size of the Byzantine Empire.

People of different national/cultural backgrounds all looked to the Kyivan Metropolitan as their spiritual leader and head, including Baltic peoples, Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Roumanians/Wallachians (St Peter Mohyla was a Moldo-Wallachia), Siberians and Poles.

Over time, Muscovy assumed the privileges of Kyiv and, on the basis of its St Andrew tradition, declared itself a Patriarchate, which fact the rest of Orthodoxy eventually acknowledged.

But the Moscow Patriarchate never denied that the See of Kyiv was the primatial See, if even within the pale of its Patriarchate, and the Kyivan Metropolitan was the one who crowned each successive Patriarch of Moscow.

The two Churches have always had a kind of "rivalry" as a result.

Although both share in the Byzantine-Slavonic tradition, there have always been local and church-wide differences among the two Churches, which is as it should be.

Even the use of Church Slavonic took on different forms in Kyiv and Moscow.

Moscow rapidly developed its own Particular rite that diverged, at times seriously, from that of Constantinople. For example, the use of the "two fingered Sign of the Cross."

It was only after the Fall of Constantinople that the Russian Tsars began seeing themselves as heading an even wider Orthodox empire that the whole controversy with the "Old Rite" took place, resulting in a struggle between Patriarch Nicon's reforms and the Staro-obryadovtsy. Both Rites exist simultaneously in the Russian Church today.

Each Orthodox Church is truly a miracle of "inculturation" among the particular people it serves.

It takes on the cultural, linguistic and spiritual perspectives of its social environment which is why it has always been such an effective evangelizer.

The Orthodox Church of Russia has also often worked with the government in expanding Russia's growing empire through Orthodoxy. There is certainly nothing wrong with that as such, as long as political pressure and Russification don't underline the process.

In Alaska, the Orthodox missions of St. Herman (a Ukrainian) and of St Innocent (a Russian whose inspiration was the work of the Ukrainian Siberian missionary St Innocent Kulchitsky whose name he took) adapted Orthodoxy to the culture and language of the local peoples with great evangelical success.

In times of oppression and persecution, the Orthodox Church tends to become the "state" of the disenfranchised people. This was true of the Russian Church under the Tatar Yoke and of the Ukrainian Church under several yokes.

The Ukrainian Church therefore has tended to reflect Ukrainian values, including a certain openness to other cultures. St John Maximovitch of San Francisco was famous for this.  Coming from the Ukrainian family of his namesake, the missionary St John of Siberia, St John of Shanghai established the French, Spanish and Netherlands Orthodox Churches.  He served the Liturgy in Chinese, brought his orphans to America after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, helped established American Orthodoxy and otherwise worked to earn the title of "Apostle of the Orthodox Diaspora."

Today, the wider cultural focus of both Churches has tended to narrow more toward the specifically Ukrainian and Russian nationalities. Years of struggle with forces bent on wiping out their faith and Slavic sense of peoplehood is the reason.

As for how Russians and Ukrainians identify themselves, that is always a rather dynamic thing.

There are ethnic Russians, many as a matter of fact, that are from Ukraine and assert they are Russian, since that is what they are, even though they are Ukrainian citizens.

I have also known Russians who are "Ukrainian wannabe's" for various reasons.

Ukraine, in fact, is a land with a Ukrainian majority, but where there have always been various ethnic minorities, including the largest one, the Russians.

Some of calculated that there are today, and have been for years, exactly 96 ethnic nationalities, with their own cultures, financial, educational and even religios institutions, that are in Ukraine today. Some of these will define themselves as "Ukrainian Tadjiks" for example. Others will say they are Russians with Ukrainian citizenship. I once met a Kuban Kozak who defined himself as such, period. But his national language was Ukrainian and his ancestors' leader was the Hetman of Ukraine.

I also once met a fellow who said his nationality was Ukrainian but his cultural background was German and his relatives came from the German colony in Ukraine. (This is one reason why I favour a constitutional monarch for Ukraine today).

Like Canada, Ukraine too is a multicultural country!

The challenge of Orthodoxy in Ukraine today is also similar to that of St Volodymyr the Great 1,000 years ago.  That is the challenge of the Kyivan Church of Ukraine adapting, once again, to the new circumstances of the people, being wholly a "Ukrainian Church" while being, at one and the same time, open to evangelizing other cultural groups, just as the Church was during the Princely Era.

Today as well, there are Orthodox parishes and churches that are "Ukrainian Orthodox" but which use, in their liturgies, English, Church Slavonic, Greek and other languages besides Ukrainian. There are even some Western Rite Orthodox groups who identify with the Kyivan Church!