It’s not up to Russia to decide if Western troops can be sent to Ukraine as part of any peace deal ending the war, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Thursday.

“Why are we interested in what Russia thinks about Ukraine?” Rutte asked the audience at the IISS Prague Defence Summit when asked about Russian leader Vladimir Putin ruling out any Western troops on Ukrainian territory. 

“Ukraine is a sovereign country. It is not up to Russia what Ukraine will decide,” Rutte said. “Finland didn’t ask Russia for approval to join NATO. We are sovereign nations, and if Ukraine wants security forces to support peace, it’s up to them.”

Work on security guarantees for Ukraine has accelerated following a gathering of European leaders at the White House at the end of August. During that meeting, U.S. President Donald Trump said that a bilateral summit between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin was in the works.

He also said that the U.S. would be able to provide support for a mission to Ukraine — although he’s ruled out sending American troops.

“Trump knows that Ukraine needs real security guarantees, and he’s doing this: not repeating Budapest, not repeating Minsk,” Rutte said, referring to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that saw Ukraine give up its nuclear weapons in return for territorial guarantees from Russia, the U.K. and the U.S., and the Minsk ceasefire agreements following Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea in 2014 — all deals violated by Russia.

However, Putin is reluctant to play along. The Kremlin had bobbed and weaved about a meeting with Zelenskyy and is continuing its ferocious bombing campaign against Ukrainian cities.

Moscow has also rejected the idea of European troops being deployed to Ukraine.

Rutte stressed that the alliance shouldn’t overestimate Russia’s power, as its economy “is not bigger than Texas.” 

“We have to stop making Putin powerful — he’s the governor of Texas, nothing more. Let’s not take him too seriously.”

The secretary-general also praised Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine and boost the alliance’s rearmament efforts. 

“Without him, the 5 percent target would never have happened,” Rutte said. NATO allies agreed in June on a new target of spending 5 percent of gross domestic product on defense.