FIDE should be apolitical and global:
Dear Arkady,
I also would like to thank you for the debate yesterday, organized by the Nordic countries. I would like to acknowledge you for praising our program for FIDE presented on our website ( FightForChess ) and for stating that you believe in the same ideas. In our modest opinion, we have gathered a very strong team which has shown their ability to succeed both within and outside of the chess-world. We have no doubts that if given the chance by the FIDE delegates we are capable of giving chess the place in the world it deserves.
Having said that, I would also like to address some of the concerns that you raised.
In your campaign page you state that we find you unsuitable to be the FIDE President due to your nationality. This is untrue and misleading. We do however find it is not in either FIDE‘s nor chess as a sport’s interest to have a former high ranked Kremlin politician as our president. It hurts our prestige, our credibility and makes it close to impossible to attract sponsorship on a global scale, which we think chess deserves and should have.
We think that FIDE President should be apolitical, a long term member of the chess-family, and an uncontroversial figure, able to fully live up to the motto “Gens Una Sumus”.
During the debate yesterday, you claimed that the only reason you are on pre-sanction list was chess-political and connected to the upcoming FIDE elections. This is not true. The arguments of the Yermak-McFaul group are specific and well-documented. They do not relate to your nationality in general but to your specific personal actions in the Russia- Ukraine conflict spanning from 2014–2022.
You were a member of the Russian government when it annexed Crimea in 2014. Shortly after, you negotiated with China about joint project in Crimea, in preparations for Putin meeting with the Chinese authorities. You never acknowledged that Crimea was annexed and, even as late as September 2018 — several months after you had left the Russian government and instead became a chess-politician — you categorically denied that Crimea was annexed but stated in strong terms that it was based on a fair referendum showing the will of the Crimean people.
In 2014–2015, in your capacity as a trusted Russian government member, you spoke on several occasions on behalf of Russia and repeatedly spread Russian disinformation about the conflict in Donbass and Luhansk. In 2014 Ukraine was shelled for several month from within Russia’s territory, documented in numerous ways, among them US satellite photos and an extensive Bellingcat report.
It is an undeniable fact, yet in your interviews at the time, given in your capacity of a representative of the Russian state, you called them “fake”. The examples are numerous and described in detail by the Yermak-McFaul group. It goes further than just the period as a Russian state representative: including as late as the statement on the Skolkovo website 15 of March 2022, almost a month after the full scale invasion of Ukraine started!
During the debate of July 9th you referred to yourself as an economist not a politician. Economists would not commonly comment on behalf of the Russian state on the specifics of an ongoing war. A politician, however, would.
Therefore, your close links to the Russian government (both in the past, and stretching all the way to the present days) make you a sub-optimal choice for the world of chess.
While it is undeniable that you managed to host a lot of tournaments in Russia during your term (11 out of 20 major events to be exact) and that you succeeded in bringing onboard numerous sponsors (among them Russian Railways, Gazprom, Rosatom, Phosagro, Norilsk Nickel, and Sima-land), it is also obvious that all the above mentioned sponsors are either Russian state-owned or connected to Oligarchs with close ties to the Kremlin.
The current leadership of FIDE has had 4 years to show its preferred way of interacting and we want the chess world to be different. We have a more global perspective, and for that the Chess world needs a president with a more global perspective.
You stated it yourself in an recent interview: that you were under pressure from 2 sides. A FIDE president however should only “serve one master”, so to speak, and that single master should be the best interests of the Chess world.
That is why we started the #FightForChess movement.
Gens Una Sumus.
