The article is a bit illiterate on the matter, as is most reporting in Western media. Why is the normative name of the primary service of Orthodox worship in scare (or scorn) quotes and not capitalized as is normal?
The article also makes it sound like the decision of the Patriarchate of Moscow to not attend influenced Georgia and Bulgaria, actually it was the other way around. Bulgaria and Antioch were the first to announce they would not attend -- and there were more reasons for Antioch not attending than the appointment of a bishop for Qatar (part of Antioch's historical ecclesiastical territory) by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the refusal of the Ecumenical Patriarch to include the matter on the agenda of the council, reasons paralleling Georgia and the Slavic churches objections. Georgia was next, and Serbia, which the article omits mention of also announced that they would not attend, the monks on Mount Athos wrote scathing critiques of the documents which, according to the rules of the council simply had to be voted up or down, with one vote per local church (a procedure quite contrary to the normal Orthodox conciliar procedure of one vote per bishop, with unanimity expected), all before Russia took the decision not to attend early last week.
The main problems with the council as proposed were that it didn't address really pressing issues (the Jerusalemites in Qatar and the state of the Orthodox Church in places like the US where in violation of the ancient canons there are multiple bishops with overlapping territories), came to modernist "solutions" to the problems it did address -- hence the critique from Mount Athos and the walk-out by all the more traditional local churches -- and would have the main effect of making it look like the Ecumenical Patriarch was an Orthodox Pope, since the council rules make it impossible to decide anything contrary to what the E.P. had put on the agenda (when a contrary decision was exactly what should have happened on a number of points).
