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AZUZ: Fighting has intensified in the eastern European nation of Ukraine. The country got its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Today, Ukraine is a nation divided, between people who want to be aligned with Russia, and those who want to be aligned more closely with Europe.

Tensions over this led to the ouster of a former Ukrainian president in 2014. Violence flared up that same year. It's become Europe's most violent crisis in decades.

And though a ceasefire was negotiated in 2015, violence and violations are on the rise.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is very messy because the ceasefire isn't really holding.

SUBTITLE: Why is there conflict in Ukraine?

WALSH: To Russia, Ukraine is it's vital near abroad. You couldn't get more geopolitically, industrially important to Moscow.

But Ukraine itself has been vacillating between getting closer to the E.U., to the West, and retaining its longer term links to Russia. That started back in uprising and revolution in 2004. And in 2014, they kicked out a pro-Russian leader.

And the Russians responded by sending a covert force and annexing the peninsula of Crimea. They then sent slightly more covert operations into the eastern city of Donetsk, where government buildings were taken over and then militia, a lot of whom had some pretty serious Russian military support started taking territory.

Since 2014, 2015, that territory has changed hands, gone back and forth, sometimes the violence escalating. But after a major ceasefire agreement in early 2015, the violence hasn't really stopped. It sort of bubbled along really a quite regular pace. Many see that Moscow have a longer term objective of perhaps linking up those eastern territories with the peninsula of Crimea, so they have a land bridge between them too, and they also want to subject Ukraine to broader political influence.

Ukraine itself, well, it needs to get that territory back, the basic reasons of national pride.

Why is this so important? Well, it's a war happening right on Europe's doorstep, on the European mainland. It pits the European Union against Russia. And hanging in the balance is Ukraine where there are a millions of people suffering deeply now from a war that's been going on for years.