As an outsider, I was curious as well.
While I can understand the desire to see that everyone is on the same pages of ESTABLISHED doctrine, as well as the desire for communication and unity, especially in combating global oppressive secular and religious influences, any time the headline of the story mentions Vatican-2, it is as if red lights are flashing, sirens are blaring, and massive asteroid impact is at hand!
The analogy I would make to the secular world is to beware of a NAFTA-EU paradigm, i.e. get one group to merge together then merge the merged groups into a one world religion.
Where is Metropolitan Kyrill coming down on this and has Metropolitan Hillarion made any interesting statements concerning it?
Their sources were pretty astute in smelling something afoot on the Catholic side back in 2005, but I don’t know where they would now come down on the global matter.
Or is the reason for the conference all something merely mundane as non-prosletization in other’s territories, setting up spheres of influence in the Ukraine, etc.?
Vatican II started with such high hopes - and look at the dreadful outcome. I don’t know about this council.
The Orthodox churches have diffuse power structures, and are hard to change. So maybe they will not be affected by this plan.