Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Kyiv this week.
How is European support for the war in Ukraine holding up?
I think it's holding up fairly well. If you look at the latest figures that are out, it shows that total European support is substantially higher than American support. Of course, the American is more important, the US on the military side. But the European figures are higher and new multi tens of billion dollar packages coming from the European Union. It is holding up much better than anyone could have thought.
With both Putin and Xi Jinping absent, what's so significant and what's going to be the outcome of the G-20 summit in India?
Yes, both are absent. Putin for fairly obvious reasons. Xi Jinping, a lot of speculation why he is, for the first time ever, not part of the G-20 summit. It could be a snub to India. Could be also that he has domestic worries that it needs to take care of. But it will be important to see if they manage to bridge the gap over primarily the Russia war against Ukraine in the summit communique. A year ago in Indonesia, they managed to get to communicate together, but it's not been successful so far. So India is up for a big test of his global ambitions. Can they get something together from the G-20? Let's see.