President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk of Ukraine, President Joachim Gauck of Germany, and President François Hollande of France have agreed to a ceasefire in the Ukraine starting on February 15th. What this means for the Ukraine and also Russia is unknown. This isn’t the first attempt at a ceasefire and it’s not impossible that this one will fail.

The Russian government is still denying any involvement in the conflict, going so far as to claim that they have only a “supportive” role in the conflict. However, they have mobilized ground forces and this is shown by a multitude of visual evidence. In April, it will mark the one-year anniversary of this war. 5,358 people have been killed as well as over 1 million people missing or displaced. If these peace talks work and no one else dies, that would mean that roughly 15 people a day died and over 3,400 were displaced each day.

To add to all of this, the U.S. is now facing possible military conflict with Russia. U.S. commander Lt. Ben Hodges has said that a deployment of 300-800 U.S. soldiers will be sent to the Ukraine to advise three battalions of Ukraine military personal in the city of Lviv. Now Lviv is quite far from the actual fighting. However, if Russia launches a attack within lethal range of Lviv, the soldiers would have to fight back.

What is wanted from the Ukraine? It is known that the Russian’s took control of Crimea in order to secure a port in the area as well as working under the pretense that most of the civilians are ethnically Russian. The best analysis that can be made is that Putin wishes to secure Russia’s assets in Ukraine. At the moment, Russia is in a hard position fighting two wars in its borders (the other being the North Caucasus conflict), as well as the fact that the Ruble as recently fallen in value. Best case this is resolved peacefully and the war ends. However, it should be noted that there is documented evidence of warcrimes on Russia’s part.