Russia Pres. Vladimir Putin has mobilized troops into eastern Ukraine in a “peacekeeping” mission.

“In the event of (the republics) being recognized, a war will become a direct necessity,” said Alexander Borodai, a member of the Russian parliament and past political leader in Donetsk, a Ukrainian city.

Tensions at the Ukraine-Russia border have escalated over the last few months. An estimated 127,000 Russian troops and military weapons have accumulated at a risky distance from Ukraine since October 2021. 30,000 other troops were sent to Belarus, while Pres. Joe Biden approved the deployment of 3,000 troops to NATO member countries such as Poland and Romania.

The Minsk-2 peace agreement was arranged in 2015 by France and Germany after Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula was annexed by Russia in 2014. The former Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, had been overthrown by mass protests. A few weeks later, a Russian separatist insurgency broke out in eastern Ukraine, causing upwards of 14,000 casualties in the continuous fighting. Russia has critiqued Ukraine and it’s western allies for failing to comply with the agreements made in the Minsk-2 agreement. The US and other NATO states have also fallen victim to Russia’s commentary by sending weapons to Ukraine. On the other hand, the Ukrainian armed forces commander-in-chief accused Russia of having around 2,100 soldiers on his land, some of which hold commanding positions in these separatist forces. Russia has continuously denied these claims, saying they do not owe information about the whereabouts of their troops to anyone.

This dilemma poses a question people have been trying to answer for months on end. Does Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, plan on invading Ukraine? He would be risking the bloodshed of his own citizens, a potential economic crisis, and the imminent involvement of nations more powerful than his own (when grouped together). Additionally, the longer Putin waits to invade, Ukraine’s Western alliances only strengthen, making invasion tougher than it already is.

At the end of the day, the only person capable of answering this question for the rest of the world is Putin himself, and as of the time of this publishing, that moment may be imminent.