Former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister. In 1995 he served as European co-chair of American-led peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, to end a three-year conflict in Bosnia. He has argued that the Dayton talks succeeded because the warring parties were exhausted and knew that America and NATO would not tolerate more fighting, leaving only a political solution. "You couldn't get serious when the guns were still firing and where there were the hopes or fears that the battlefield situation was going to change in a fundamental way," he has said.
Bildt has drawn on his experience at Dayton to critique Vladimir Putin's approach to peace talks over Ukraine. He has argued that Putin's demands for territory conceal a larger goal: to prevent Ukraine from thriving as a state that is at once Slavic, democratic and Western. He distrusts Putin's call to tackle all disputes at once, arguing that a sincere peace drive would start with a ceasefire, allowing step-by-step work on subjects such as Ukraine's electricity supplies, the fate of prisoners of war, abducted Ukrainian children and sanctions. In his experience, peace deals must "meet the minimum requirements of everyone, but not the maximum requirements of anyone".
Love is staying up all night with a sick child, or a healthy adult.