Metropolitan Michael is from Syria. In 988, during the Baptism of Vladimirova, he was sent to the Grand Duke in Korsun by Patriarch Nicholas of Tsaregrad Hrisoverg. The Metropolitan arrived in Kiev from Korsun together with Grand Duke Vladimir. Michael was a zealous propagator of Christianity; passing through vast countries, he planted the seeds of the faith of Christ. Metropolitan Mikhail is credited with the construction of the Kiev-Zlatoverkho-Mikhailovsky Monastery, and the monks who arrived with him from Tsargrad are credited with the foundation of the Kiev-Mezhyhirsky monastery. 
Michael built churches wherever he could, installed priests and deacons and overthrew idols. The chronicles say that the people, glued to the ancient superstition, looked with regret at the destruction of their idols, and when their god Perun was thrown into the Dnieper, the crowd, running after their idol, shouted after him: "Perune, get out!" i.e., "swim out." The idol, carried by the rush of the waters, allegedly obeying the voice of those crying out to him, landed at the very place where after, in the XI century, a monastery was built and named Vydubitsky.
St. Michael died in Kiev; his relics rested openly in the great cathedral Church of the Caves. In the inscription at his shrine on the lattice it was depicted that this saint passed away in 992, buried in the Tithe Church; that under the Pechersk abbot Theoktista his relics were transferred to the Antoniev Cave; and according to the presentation of Archimandrite Roman Kopa and by personal decree on July 23, 1730, they were transferred on October 1 of the same year to the great church (Pecherskaya Street).
It is not known when St. Michael was canonized: it is necessary to assume, from the very transfer of his relics to the caves, for in the list of the venerable Anthony cave he is listed in Kalnofoysky in 1638; and in the book of Akathists with canons, printed in the Pechersk printing house in 1677, in song 9, verse 1, the Rules of the Venerable Fathers Pechersk, his name was put, as it is still printed in this canon; but he was not in the general monastic lists, like other reverend Pechersk. Already by decrees of the Holy Synod on June 15, 1762, May 18, 1775 and October 31, 1784. It is allowed to print the services of the Venerable: Michael, Anthony, Theodosius and other miracle workers of the Caves in books published by the Lavra Printing House, and by decree of St. Nicholas. On August 6, 1795, the Synod was ordered to compose a detailed biography of St. Michael for placement in the Four Mineias.
St. Michael is revered as the first Metropolitan of Kiev. Some chronicles call him the second, and the first the Greek Leontius or Leov; in the Novgorod chronicler, the painting of the metropolitans begins with Theopempt (1037).
Until the 13th century, the metropolitans lived permanently in Kiev. The devastation of this city forced them to move the see of the metropolis to Vladimir on Klyazma, and then, at the beginning of the XIV century, to Moscow, where they ruled the Russian Church until the establishment of the patriarchate (1589). The metropolitans of All Russia were first called Kiev and all Russia. Upon the establishment of the patriarchate, the Kiev metropolitans, upon their inclusion in the Russian hierarchy, occupied the first place after the patriarchs.