A key question is whether Mr Trump can be counted on to safeguard Ukraine’s interests. Concerns are swirling that he could “sell out” the country and push for a compromise with Mr Putin.
Ukraine aside, nowhere is that fear of getting played out by the superpowers more keenly felt than on the Korean peninsula, where similarly, one country was ripped apart during the Cold War.
With one part under the US sphere of influence and the other under Russia’s, the two Koreas again risk becoming pawns in a proxy fight between the princes.
Both are worried that in Mr Trump’s and Mr Putin’s desire to strike a broader deal, their interests will end up sacrificed.
In Pyongyang, risks of getting ditched grow
Across Asia, as allies and trading partners to the US in Asia scramble to deal with an announced framework for US reciprocal tariffs, it is Mr Kim Jong Un who will give undivided attention to the grand bargain on Ukraine being hashed out.
After all, he might just get ditched by a resurgent Russia which, despite its historical ties to North Korea as communist comrades-in-arms, has growing relations with an expanding number of countries in Eurasia and Africa through the Brics grouping.
North Korea survives by dint of support from its superpower friends. And after decades of reliance on China for food, fuel and fertiliser, and a Covid-19 wake-up call on the need to diversify support after China closed borders and aid supplies, Pyongyang struck gold in 2024.
A strategic partnership with Russia gave it heft in influencing international affairs and bolstered North Korea’s sense of security. It resulted in a defence pact, security cooperation as well as valuable battlefield experience and foreign currency as it supplied ammunition, soldiers and more to Russia.
For a while, even if thousands of its men were getting killed in Ukraine, North Korea appeared a somewhat credible military force capable of projecting chaos globally. But despite that strong tailwind, the North Korea of today is not the same pressing security threat to the US as it was in 2017 – when it ran nuclear tests, first developed the ability to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, and explicitly proclaimed an intention of firing one at US bases in Guam.
In 2017, outgoing president Barack Obama flagged North Korea as the most urgent problem facing the US to his successor, Mr Trump. But in 2025, North Korea has lost that aura. Its position as a client state reliant on superpower patronage creates more vulnerabilities than strengths.
As a threat in the Indo-Pacific, the hermit kingdom is “a problem to be solved in two seconds” if China so wished, Mr Trump had once told Chinese President Xi Jinping.
And in the Atlantic theatre, North Korea’s involvement in the Ukraine war – along with the reciprocal aid from Russia in nuclear capability and defence weaponry development – may now be a bargaining chip for Mr Putin to trade away.
At the very least, the tap will be tightened. If the war in Ukraine ends, Russia has no need for North Korean munitions or cannon fodder. That would leave North Korea back at square one.
A chance for a deal?
Still, the search for an end to the Ukraine war provides a starting point for talks between the US and North Korea.
There are signs that the US is open to and equipped for engagement with Mr Kim. Mr Trump has assembled a team which includes appointing Mr Richard Grenell, a former US ambassador to Germany, as presidential envoy for special issues including on North Korea. He has also picked Mr Alex Wong, a former deputy special representative for North Korea, as deputy national security adviser.
Sensing an opportunity, North Korea, too, might decide to take its chances and negotiate with the US, linking an end to its involvement in Ukraine with matters on the Korean peninsula. It has been trying to catch America’s eye, taunting the US since Mr Trump’s return by condemning the US’ Gaza takeover suggestion.
Why might it do that? A key problem with past Trump-Kim summits was the misalignment of expectations: The US expected “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation” or CVID, failing to recognise this contradicted Mr Kim’s desire for regime survival, in which the possession of nuclear weapons was critical.
The Ukraine war reinforced that belief in Mr Kim. Why should he repeat the disastrous mistake by Ukraine, which gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994 in exchange for a guarantee of its security and sovereignty, only to be invaded by Russia, a signatory to that agreement, twice in a decade?
That impediment appears removed, if Mr Trump’s recent comments recognising North Korea as a “nuclear power” becomes policy – an outcome made of the stuff of North Korea’s wildest dreams.
The US approach would then centre on arms control and non-proliferation. The questions to be resolved in any negotiation are how many warheads and what delivery systems Pyongyang should be allowed to possess.
The risk is that the superpowers might decide to answer that question themselves and arm-twist North Korea to accept terms. Its choices are limited and, so, it frets. Earlier, it could play the rogue-state card, assured of the backing of its powerful allies. But Mr Putin has bigger fish to fry now and Pyongyang may have to fall in line and accept harsher conditions than it wanted.
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In Seoul, fears of abandonment loom
Across the demilitarised zone on the 38th parallel, the mood is strikingly sombre, as fears of abandonment by the US and risks of getting sidelined grow.
Mr Trump’s penchant for unpredictability and unilateralism, coupled with his transactional approach to foreign policy, exacerbates such anxieties.
“Allowing North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and leaving South Korea out of any US talks with North Korea are bright red lines for Seoul,” Professor Lee Shin-wha of the department of political science and international relations at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Unification Studies, and visiting scholar at the East Asian Institute, tells me.
Moving away from that sancrosanct goal of denuclearisation and letting North Korea keep its nukes opens a can of worms for Seoul.
South Korean soldiers watching a live-firing exercise with the US Army in Pocheon on Feb 10. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
What if Washington trades off Seoul’s security for its own – and allows Mr Kim to keep his short-range missiles and other nuclear delivery systems capable of destroying his neighbour in return for dismantling his long-range missile capability that can reach the US?
What if Mr Kim demands that Mr Trump draw down the US military presence on the Korean peninsula in return? Can Seoul count on a man all too willing to do away with US-South Korea military drills in the past not to concede on its behalf?
For now, all Seoul can do is to give Mr Trump fewer reasons to cut it off after witnessing him threaten to let Russia have its way with Nato countries that do not “pay their dues”.
“South Korea understands the need for burden-sharing on defence and security, and is committed to raising its share of the cost of stationing US troops in the country,” Prof Lee highlights.
Regardless, it won’t be able to shake off the fear of winding up a price-taker presented with a fait accompli of accepting North Korea’s nuclear status.
“Denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula remains a goal that enjoys non-partisan consensus even if the political parties are divided on the pathway to achieving that,” Professor Park Hahn-kyu, dean of the college of international studies at Kyung Hee University, points out.
“Conservatives see North Korea as an enemy and prefer an approach of deterrence and pressure, whereas liberals tend to view them as siblings and think economic cooperation will create interdependence and growth that obliterate the need for nuclear weapons,” he says.
No matter the means, extinguishing the threat of a nuclear attack from North Korea remains South Korea’s key objective. For a long time, the alliance with the US seemed the surest way of enabling that. But trust is the oil in that partnership, and that could be eroded.
Seoul sweats as it weighs uncomfortable options, chief of which is this: If the US cannot guarantee its security, should it go nuclear?
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Of princes and pawns
The emerging contours of a deal in Ukraine may also set the wheels in motion for a paradigm shift in US foreign policy towards the Korean peninsula – as one of investments in exchange for arms control.
And unlike the Agreed Framework deal in place from 1994 to 2002, which froze North Korea’s nuclear power programme in exchange for energy aid from the US, today, Pyongyang has something the US wants.
Mr Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, is in Ukraine this week to discuss US access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, a natural resource used in everything from smartphones to missile systems.
If Ukraine refuses, America has alternatives. Studies have suggested the world’s largest deposits lie in North Korea.
The US, too, could offer something Mr Kim wants: economic development. Notably, Mr Kim had publicly apologised to the North Korean people in February 2024; he said he was “ashamed and sorry” for neglecting rural development and promised to reverse the trend by building factories over the next 10 years.
A final note: This endeavour to figure out how the end of the Ukraine war might affect the trajectory of a 70-year-old Korean War frozen in time is admittedly largely guesswork.
Then again, there are no easy answers to a North Korean misfit that appears to have little choice other than to constantly use the threat of developing nuclear weapons to blackmail others to survive.
Whatever happens, the upcoming chat between Mr Trump and Mr Putin is a timely reminder of the influence developments in Europe can have in Asia, and the uncomfortable chokehold powerful countries have over others.
To paraphrase an old adage, the strong do what they want and the not-so-strong suffer what they must.
Lin Suling is senior columnist at The Straits Times.
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