The consensus of much of world sport to punish Russia for invading Ukraine increasingly shows gaps, which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is not doing its best to fill. Six top-level Russian players will compete in the Women’s World Cup starting this Tuesday in Linares (Jaén) under the name of “FIDE (International Chess Federation) team”. In principle, the IOC expressly excludes team events from allowing Russians and Belarusians to compete under a neutral flag; but he authorized FIDE to make an exception.
In a letter to which EL PAÍS had access and which the IOC does not wish to publish, its sporting director, Pierre Ducrey, provides two reasons for exceptionally authorizing the president of FIDE, the Russian Arkady Dvorkovich, to admit Russian players to the Linares World Cup. The first is that it is not an Olympic competition, although it is true that the IOC General Assembly recognized chess as a sport and FIDE as a member in 1999, at the request of the then president, the Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch.
The second reason mentioned by Ducrey is that each international sports federation has a certain degree of autonomy, as seen recently at the World Gymnastics Championships held in Indonesia, where Russian gymnasts were admitted (under neutral flag) but not Israeli gymnasts, contrary to the IOC criteria. The controversy grew even more when it was discovered that Russian star Angelina Melníkova is an admirer of Vladimir Putin and a former member of his political party, from which she resigned when the IOC asked, as one of the conditions for competing under a neutral flag, not to support the invasion of Ukraine.
This requirement is very elusive. For example, some of the Russian chess players competing in Linares have been congratulated in public by Putin or senior officials of his government, as has Melníkova. Or they participated in tournaments organized by Sergei Kariakin, world runner-up in 2016, a staunch defender of Putin and the invasion, and for this they received sporting sanctions. But there is no evidence that any of these actors explicitly supported aggression against Ukraine. FIDE President Dvorkovich told EL PAÍS on Tuesday: “I understand Ukraine’s protest well from an emotional point of view. But at this moment there is no solid argument to prevent the participation of these Russian players under the FIDE flag, because the IOC authorizes it.”
Dvorkovich himself finds himself in a paradoxical and ambiguous situation. After serving as economic advisor to Putin (2008-2012) and deputy prime minister to Dmitry Medvedev (2012-2018), he chaired the 2018 World Cup Organizing Committee and headed the Skolkovo Innovation Center from 2018 to 2022, simultaneously with his first term in FIDE. Putin’s government celebrated his re-election as president of FIDE (which groups 201 countries) in August 2022 despite having publicly demonstrated against the invasion of Ukraine a few months earlier: “Wars are the worst thing you can encounter in life, including this war.” A jurist very close to Putin, Andrei Turchak, then called him a “traitor” and a “fifth column”, as well as calling for “his immediate fall from grace”. And he was immediately removed from the Skolkovo presidency after publishing an open letter boasting of the courage of Russian soldiers.
In a purely sporting field, the Russians with the FIDE flag won in the first round 2.5-1.5 against Kazakhstan, while Spain fell against the USA with the same result.
Leontxo García is, in addition to collaborating with EL PAÍS since 1985, FIDE advisor for educational chess.
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