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Ukrainian Grandmaster Bids to Unseat Russian Head of World Chess Body


KYIV, Ukraine – Russia’s war against Ukraine has engulfed even the seemingly peaceful world of chess, where a Ukrainian grandmaster is bidding to unseat the powerful president of the National Chess Federation. economy of Russia.

Representatives of 195 member countries is expected to vote on Sunday at a conference in Chennai, India, for the president of the federation, the governing body of the chess world, the governing body of all international championships, to confirm determine the ranking of players and decide where the global and continental championships will be held. The current President, Arkady V. Dvorkovich, former deputy prime minister of Russia, facing three challengersincluding Andrii Baryshpolets, a 31-year-old Ukrainian grandmaster living in California.

His bid is an illustration of many Ukrainians’ efforts to untangle their country’s deep ties to Russia, as well as challenge Moscow’s global influence, following the February invasion of Ukraine.

“Certainly, the war was my motivation to fight for changes at FIDE,” said Baryshpolets, using the French acronym the chess federation is commonly known as.

Mr. Baryshpolets, an economist who immigrated to the US in 2016. He said: “It’s an ambiguous structure and it depends a lot on Russian money and Russian donors. forecast Russian influence on the cultural front.

Mr. Baryshpolets pointed out that in 2020, the last year of financial reporting, Russian state and private companies provided more than 90 percent of all donations to FIDE, contributing more than 45 percent of the organization’s budget.

Chess is traditionally tied to the Russian state and is a display of the country’s global power – a legacy of Soviet dominance over the sport it sponsors and nurtures. From when the International Chess Federation established its first world championship in 1948, to 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Soviet players won every championship but one.

Mr. Dvorkovich, 50, was elected president four years ago, replacing eccentric Russian millionaire Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov, who was embroiled in scandals. two decades of reign ended with him being suspended by the federation’s ethics committee in 2018.

Mr. Dvorkovich has said that his close relationship with the Kremlin and Russian President Putin is in the past.

In an interview, Mr Dvorkovich said he “understands the reputational risks” posed by his previous relationship with the Russian state. He describes himself as “between two flames”, criticized both in Russia for his refusal to openly support the war and abroad for his links to the Kremlin.

In an online debate with other candidates for the presidency of the organization in July, he described himself as “far from the Kremlin” and pledge to resign if he was ever punished by the West. That same month, the head of Russia’s chess federation called Mr Dvorkovich “our candidate” and predicted he would win easily.

Under Dvorkovich’s leadership, the federation condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and severed key funding ties with Russian-controlled companies. After the invasion, Russian players could only compete in official international tournaments under the flag of another country or the neutral FIDE flag.

However, Mr. Dvorkovich repeated the Kremlin’s false claims that it was fighting fascism in Ukraine.

At the same time, he is often appreciated for his leadership of FIDE, and he remains a favorite in both chess powers like India and dozens of small national federations that rely on funding from a development fund. FIDE’s special development to work.

“Compared to four years ago, FIDE today is completely different,” Milan Dinic, editor of the British Chess Review, said of the changes he believes Mr Dvorkovich has made. “It is more respected both inside and outside the chess world, and its finances have improved and become more transparent,” he added, acknowledging that the organization still needs more change. .

Al Lawrence, chief executive officer of the US Chess Trust, a charity that provides chess scholarships to children and veterans, says that despite established systems to strengthen institutional processes to Decision making does not fall into the hands of one leader, the FIDE president still has considerable influence over essential issues.

“Who the president is is very important,” said Lawrence, a former director of the American Chess Federation, who is speaking personally. “Honestly, right now the federation is allied very closely with Russian influences.”

That influence could serve Russia’s broader interests almost immediately. The day after the presidential election, the chess federation is expected to make a proposal to lift the ban on Russian teams at major championships. Chess, like most sports in the world, imposed a ban on Russian teams after Russia invaded Ukraine.

“We want our national team back on the big stage,” said Andrei Filatov, head of the Russian Chess Federation, speak in July.

In Mr. Baryshpolets’ hometown, Kyiv, on a recent Saturday, chess players gathered in Shevchenko Park, placing plastic chess pieces on a stone table while they waited for their partners.

Like the federation contenders, almost all of them learned to play as children.

Vadim Weisberger, 63, a businessman who used to be one of the players, said: “For us, it is not so important as citizens of Ukraine, we want a Ukrainian to be the stand. union head.

Others said they left the fight behind after they sat down at the chessboard.

“This is the civilized world of chess,” said Serhiy Maiboroda, a retired police detective. “Here we talk about chess; Politics we discuss in different places. “

Mr. Baryshpolets learned to play chess when he was 6 years old and competed in tournaments when he was 8 years old. in Russia, awarded.

“A major concern that the feds also see is the lack of transparency and clarity of what goes on inside this black box, why certain decisions are being made,” he said. “There is very little communication and interpretation for the federations and the chess world.”

Mr. Baryshpolets ran a light-hearted campaign, meeting with delegates in Chennai and taking regular shuttles to the site. Each national federation has a single vote in the secret ballot to elect the president, an unpaid office.

It seems that the one country that will not support him is Ukraine: Their Federation has endorsed another candidate. Meanwhile, India appears to have aligned with Mr Dvorkovich, both as Viswanathan Anand, the former Russian ticketed world champion, and in gratitude for Mr Dvorkovich’s help in the process. winning the Olympic Chess Championship, an event specialist with 3,000 players and hundreds of delegates, to Chennai.

The United States Chess Federation said in a statement from its chief executive officer, Carol Meyer, that it has not yet decided on a ticket to advance and will await a response from its delegation after meeting with all the candidates. member in Chennai. Team USA has two players from Ukraine; one of them, Anna Zatonskikh, a native of Mariupol, said that “it is wrong to have a Russian as head of FIDE.”

Chess analysts say that with the three challenging Mr. Dvorkovich, they will most likely split the opposition vote, reducing his chances of defeating him. Others note that a secret ballot allows voters to support Mr Dvorkovich even as their countries oppose the war in Ukraine and Russia more generally.

“Whatever is going on is happening behind the scenes,” said Peter Tamburro Jr., senior editor of American Chess Magazine.

“I wonder if we are going to have an election that is heavily influenced by the money pouring in different places,” he added, noting that many of the federation’s member states are small nations. more and less rich.

Lev Alburt, a former Ukrainian chess champion who defected to the United States in 1979 while playing for the Soviet Union, said that while the war meant the chess world was losing the support of major sponsors of Russia, he believes it may have been created by others emerging with deep pockets.

“In the Arab world,” he said, “the United Arab Emirates is a big sponsor of chess, and Saudi Arabia is becoming a big supporter.”

Alburt said he sees the challenge to global chess as only a small part of the aftermath of the war between Ukraine and Russia.

“The world as a whole is likely to become frozen, like a new Cold War,” he said. “And in such a situation it would be very difficult to hold the chess world together.”

Jane Arraf reported from Kyiv, Ukraine and Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia.





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