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US President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House in Washington, DC, on Feb. 28, 2025. (AP/Yonhap)

US President Donald Trump summoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House on Monday for a historic summit that is likely to have major ramifications for the international order going forward. There are reports that Trump relayed the content of his discussion with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the US-Russia summit in Alaska on Friday and urged Zelenskyy to accept an agreement that would forfeit Ukraine’s Donbas region to Russia in exchange for the US and European countries collectively providing a security guarantee for Ukraine. 

The multipolar order in which the fates of weak nations are decided through deals made by superpowers, demonstrated by the Munich Agreement of 1938 and the Yalta conference in 1945, is rearing its head after more than 80 years. 

In such a situation, South Korea needs to foster the capacity for autonomous strength to prevent the Korean Peninsula from becoming a sacrificial lamb in the power struggle between the US and China. 

On Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social: “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight. Remember how it started. No getting back Obama-given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE.”

On Saturday, the day after his summit with Putin, Trump posted: “It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.”

According to reports by The New York Times and other major outlets, Putin told Trump that he would be willing to sign an agreement to end the war and not to resume his invasion of Ukraine in the future if Ukrainian troops withdrew from the Donbas region and if the region were seceded to Russia. 

The Donbas region is Putin’s stated reason for starting the war. Russia currently occupies 88% of it. 

In exchange for ceding territory, Trump would provide Ukraine security guarantees. 

During an interview with CNN on Sunday, Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, said that Trump was close to securing an agreement where the United States and other European nations could offer “Article 5-like protection” to cover a security guarantee for Ukraine. 

This is reminiscent of the situation Korea faced over 70 years ago, when we had to accept the division of the Korean Peninsula in exchange for a mutual defense treaty with the US, signed in 1953. 

Faced with the uncomfortable reality of Korea’s division, former independence activist Ahn Chai-hong (1891-1965) published a column in Shincheonji magazine in July 1948. “Both democracy and communism relish in the international order and make us reliant on foreign powers,” he opined. 

Ukraine, the Korean Peninsula, and Taiwan make up the front line in the new cold war. If we’re to avoid a repeat of the tragedy we suffered 72 years ago, we need to foster our own perspective on the international order and reduce our excessive reliance on the US. 

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