While the normal organization of the Orthodox Church outside the region that had been part of the Roman Empire (and inside the portion of that region in which Christian countries threw off the Ottoman Yoke in the 19th century) is for there to be a local Orthodox Church for the country, the normal procedure for such local churches to arise is for the "mother church" of which the church in the country had been part, to grant either autonomy (complete independence in all things except the selection of the chief hierarch) or autocephaly (complete adminstrative independence). This is the procedure by which Georgia and Armenia gained autocephalous churches in late antiquity (the Armenian church eventually ended up in communion with Ethiopians, Copts and Syrian Jacobites, rather than the Orthodox) -- both granted by the Patriarchate of Antioch. It is the procedure by which Serbia and Bulgaria gained autocephalous churches in the middle ages, and again, along with Greece, Albania and Romania, in the 19th century (the Ottomans forced all Orthodox Christians in their Empire to be subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople as the milletbashi (ethnarch in Greek) of the Rum Millet -- Roman Nation) -- granted by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It is the procedure by which the churches in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Lands, Japan became autonomous, and the OCA became autocephalous -- granted by the Patriarchate of Moscow.
What is happening in Ukraine is a power-grab by Constantinople, which is establishing this "Independent" church on the canonical territory of the Patriarchate of Moscow. Ukraine should, in the normal course of things, have an autocephalous church, but autocephaly is not Constantinople's to grant, but the mother church, in this case the Patriarchate of Moscow.
Of course, power grabs by Constantinople executed against Moscow are nothing new. The establishment of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America on territory evangelized (from an Orthodox point of view) by and canonically subject to the Partriarchate of Moscow in the 1920s is the reason there is not a single local Orthodox church in the United States, but essentially colonies of every Old World Orthodox Church excepting the autonomous ones I mentioned above, the Church of Cyprus and the Patriarchate of Alexandria (which now includes all of Africa), and was in complete defiance of the normal canonical order of the Orthodox Church. Once the Greeks had their own bishops, everyone else wanted their own bishops, too. This despite the condemnation of ethnically separated parallel jurisdictions as representing the heresy of ethnophylitism (confounding the Church with the nation) when the Bulgarians wanted such an arrangement inside the territory of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the last 19th century before Bulgaria shook off Ottoman domination>
