Moscow, Dec 9 (AFP/APP): As Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky meet for the first time on Monday, many wonder what Moscow’s long-term goal is in strife-torn eastern Ukraine. The talks, mediated by France and Germany, will focus on implementing the Minsk accords — agreements drawn up in 2015 to end the fighting and find a political solution for Ukraine’s separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. In providing moral, economic and allegedly military support to the separatists, Moscow has been following a playbook it has used elsewhere in the ex-Soviet world. Its tactics in other frozen conflicts in the region — in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria — could provide a glimpse of the future for eastern Ukraine. – Supporting separatists – The 1991 collapse of the USSR sparked a series of separatist movements, as borders drawn up by the Soviets left behind a patchwork of ethnic and linguistic tensions. Russia fiercely opposed separatists on its own territory — the war in Chechnya is the prime example — but in other cases backed what it said were calls for self-determination. In Georgia, Moscow supported two breakaway regions: Abkhazia on the Black Sea and South Ossetia on the … Continue reading Is Moscow using its frozen conflict playbook in Ukraine?