Rubble and empty shell casings. Husks of buildings with shattered windows and crumbling walls. Tanks crouched along the horizon like huge, sleeping beasts.

These are all scenes from the front lines in Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukraine, where, for several months, Ukrainian troops have been clashing with Russian-backed separatists in the eastern side of the country. The separatists, who rose to prominence following the overthrow of President Yanukovych, have varying goals, but most want some sort of independent state with close ties to Russia.

February 15 marked the beginning of a ceasefire between the two groups. Both sides agreed to stop fighting and have removed heavy weaponry from the front lines. However, the peace has proven to be fragile, and many are skeptical that it will hold.

Leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France agreed on the ceasefire during talks in Belarus on February 11 and 12. They also made decisions about a number of other key issues, like border control and economic relations.

“We now have a glimmer of hope,” stated German chancellor Angela Merkel. But she added that “there is very, very much work still to do.”

Indeed, many leaders aren’t sure that the truce will last. A different ceasefire was put in place last September, but there were numerous violations that ended in a return of the full-scale fighting.

February’s ceasefire, too, has been violated several times—mostly by the rebels, but also by the Ukrainian forces. On the first day of the truce, in the town of Debaltseve, the rebels reportedly launched 112 attacks on Ukrainian troops, who themselves broke the ceasefire 27 times.

In the area near the Donetsk Airport, fighting showed no sign of letting up over a month after the truce was called. The airport is now destroyed, and its ruins lie in rebel-held territory. In the government-controlled suburb of Peski, there is almost constant gunfire. When asked by a BBC reporter about the ceasefire, a Ukrainian soldier laughed and gestured to the sound of rapid gunshots outside his trench.

“There, you hear?” he asked. “That’s the ceasefire. This is a light ‘ceasefire.’ Sometimes it gets worse.”

Still, for the most part, the truce has given soldiers from both sides a reprieve. Many of these soldiers are civilians who have volunteered to fight, like Igor Filipov, who used to be a gardener. Gesturing to the desolate landscape, he told the BBC: “I knew this place before the war. And look what has happened to it now! We don’t want this to happen in our hometowns. This is why we are fighting.”

But for other civilians, the war offers no choices. It hit the poor and the elderly the hardest, because they lack the resources to escape from combat zones. “We haven’t had our pensions for months,” sobs Volga, a native of Donetsk. “We have had no help, no humanitarian aid.”

The war has been raging for almost a year and has taken thousands of lives. Almost a million people have been displaced from their homes, and 600,000 have fled to neighboring countries—most to Russia.

What is most striking to Global History teacher Mrs. Raphaels is that “the same issues that have been causing conflict for hundreds of years are still causing conflict today. The idea of ‘I belong to this group, and we want our own country’. If you take a look at the conflicts around the world, so many of them are caused by that.”

In keeping with that theme, Russia has been supplying weapons and soldiers to the pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. This has greatly increased the anti-Russian attitude in the West, further adding to the negative sentiment created by Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

“How I see it,” says Talia Shakhnovsky ’18, “is that Russia basically invaded and forcefully took over another country’s territory, so [it] is at fault. And the US and Europe should commit to their sanctions to help Ukraine.”

Indeed, the United States and the European Union have imposed several sanctions against Russia and Crimea. Many believe that Russian-Western relations are in the worst conditions since the time of the Cold War.

However, while it is true that the Ukrainian conflict has sparked much larger political and moral debates, the main concern remains the war itself – which, despite the temporary peace, doesn’t show any signs of coming to an end.

What happens next in Ukraine is anyone’s guess. Regardless, the world will be watching.