This truly bizarre statement appears to have been made by Mark Rutte, former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, and now NATO Secretary-General:
But why are we interested in what Russia thinks about troops in Ukraine? It’s a sovereign country. It’s not for them to decide. …
Russia has nothing to do with this. … Ukraine is a sovereign nation. If Ukraine wants to have security guarantee forces in Ukraine to support the peace deal, it’s up to them. Nobody else can decide about it.
I think we really have to stop making Putin too powerful. He is the governor of Texas, not more. So let’s not take it too serious. [1]
The bold is in the Guardian. I am not sure where it comes from.
This is really outlandish. Putin is the “governor of Texas”? Stop right there. No – let’s go on; “let’s not take it too serious”. Well, Putin has his finger on the button on the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, so maybe we should “take it serious”.
Two points. Firstly; of course, this is the line that Stoltenberg before him was parroting. “Spheres of influence are a thing of the past”. Except, of course, that all these people know perfectly well that the US maintains a sphere of influence and would not dream in a million years of allowing Russia to build up a military-intelligence presence near their borders. For example; before the war, Russia actually conducted a little thought experiment, mentioning that they were thinking of sending forces to Venezuela. This was very quickly shot down with a scarcely veiled threat of a military response. [2] No one jumping up and down then saying “Venezuela is a sovereign country”. Secondly; Rutte, amazingly enough, simply reveals the actual NATO/Western leader thinking behind this. Putin is the head of a province. He doesn’t have sovereign rights, because Russia is just a province, not a country. Rutte actually said it, out loud. And, probably he is so intoxicated with his own false narrative, that he hasn’t even noticed. It is Russia they “don’t take serious”, and that is a problem.
Leaving all that aside. Has any one of these “Collation of the Willing” people listened to what Russia has said? They have said no; you are not going to have a bunch of NATO troops in Ukraine as part of a peace deal. Surely, you don’t need to be a logician to grasp then that all this talk about “security guarantee forces” in Ukraine means there will be no peace deal. Who is blocking peace?
Why are they pursuing this madness? Zelensky is plugging this because, in order to save his regime, he needs to pull something substantial out of the defeat, and “security guarantees” is about the only option left to him. Plus, he might be able to get the far-right on board because they would understand, (as Russia does only too well), that once these “security guarantee forces” were in Ukraine, they could provoke a new confrontation with Russia and drag NATO into the war. Zelensky is, at least, rational. The European leaders, it is hard to say. I think they are really just like metronomes or robots. Their minds have fixated on some idea about “security guarantees” and “sovereign Ukraine”, (at the same time as they are ready in practice to accept the loss of 20% of it), and they are just banging on on this theme in an autonomic, brain-dead, kind of a way. It is a curious spectacle.
Notes
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/sep/04/ukraine-russia-security-guarantees-coalition-of-the-willing-paris-europe-live-news-updates?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with%3Ablock-68b94c2d8f087bf4418b5467#block-68b94c2d8f087bf4418b5467
- https://www.wlrn.org/news/2022-01-13/u-s-pledges-decisive-response-if-russia-deploys-military-in-cuba-venezuela-over-ukraine-crisis