French riots highlight policing problem

Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics.

Does France have a policing problem?

Well, I mean, primarily they got a riot problem. This is a third major wave of severe riots that President Macron is facing. The first was the "yellow vests," as they were called. The second was the protest over pension reforms, which was more overtly political. And this has been triggered by the police killing a young guy in a Paris suburb a couple of days ago. It's a severe issue. They do have a police problem, although substantially less than we find in the United States. Let's see what happens. President Macron has been forced to cancel his important visit to Berlin in order to focus on these issues. Let's see what happens. It's a rather French phenomenon.

What's been the fallout of the coup or the mutiny attempt in Moscow?

Well, the answer to that is that we simply don't know. We don't know exactly what happened during the day of the mutiny of the rebellion. We know even less perhaps of the fallout that is going to play out over quite some time. When these things happened, they fundamentally shake a regime, and this regime has been shaken. Putin is now trying to regain strength in different ways. To some extent, he might succeed. To some extent, it's highly unlikely that he will succeed. So, the development of Russia has entered a new phase. Whether this will have an effect on the battlefield. We haven't seen that as of yet. But there's a lot on this that we haven't seen as of yet.