Between War and Peace

FIDE President Arkady Vladimirovich Dvorkovich, in an interview with Mother Jones, called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine rather than its further escalation, because he said, “Wars do not just kill priceless lives. Wars kill hopes and aspirations, freeze or destroy relationships and connections”. He is aware, indeed, that by now already many old friendships and associations have been broken off, maybe irreparably, but, in the midst of his campaign for reelection to FIDE Presidency, he cannot but “dream of seeing Ukrainian and Russian players competing again with each other”. Not coincidentally Dvorkovich told RBC that he identifies himself in the words of Do Russian people stand for war?, a 1961 anti-war poem written by Yevgeny Aleksándrovich Yevtushenko and set to music by Eduard Savelievich Kolmanovsky, which was also cited by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy in his address to the Russian people just before the outbreak of war. “But most importantly, I hope for peace on earth, with no place for either nazism or one country’s domination over another”, he added. On the other hand, as Chairman of Skolkovo Foundation, Dvorkovich did not spare his severe criticism of the way the West responded, with strict sanctions aimed at cutting Russia off from the world economy. “I have no respect for those foreign companies which abandoned the Russian market”, he said. “Some of them, perhaps, will never put their foot on it again”. However, at least apparently, he shows no apprehension whatever of what he calls “tough but senseless” sanctions: “Our primary task is to get rid of technological dependence, something that can be achieved only through teamwork, with each team-worker being a leader in his own place”. But no one knows how long will be the journey back from free trade to autarky and what its cost will be. At best Dvorkovich can only assure that Skolkovo Foundation will make “maximum efforts to build and strengthen our country’s economic self-sufficiency”. Photo: Andrey Lyubimov/RBC.