After ten years of banishment and creative silence, former FIDE President Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov was finally delisted by the U.S. Treasury Department as a financial frontman for Bashar al-Assad — an “excommunication” which eventually costed him his office.
“I am grateful to Donald Trump, who by his decree removed me from the blacklist”, Ilyumzhinov said to TASS correspondent Andrey Fyodorovich Kartashov. “I tirelessly fought for ten years — I wrote letters to [Barack] Obama, [George W.] Bush, and Trump. And I filed lawsuits. Now justice has prevailed”.
But the big news is that Ilyumzhinov intends to take back what has been taken away from him, i.e., FIDE Presidency. “FIDE presidential elections will take place in September of next year in Uzbekistan. At one time, I was asked to surrender the office, since I was under sanctions. But now that they have been lifted from me, I am ready to run for the post of President of FIDE. For this, I just need to be nominated by five countries”, Ilyumzhinov said. Needless to say, if he will be elected, his priority mission shall be “to restore the full glory of the Soviet and Russian chess school. So that the Russian flag flies at all FIDE competitions. I intend to talk about it with [U.S. President Donald] Trump, among other things”.
It remains to be seen, however, what decisions the incumbent FIDE President Arkady Vladimirovich Dvorkovich — who enjoys wide esteem throughout the chess community and the Kremlin’s trust in his ability to guarantee the motherland’s interest through informal diplomacy — and with him the very Russian Federation will take.
But the big news is that Ilyumzhinov intends to take back what has been taken away from him, i.e., FIDE Presidency. “FIDE presidential elections will take place in September of next year in Uzbekistan. At one time, I was asked to surrender the office, since I was under sanctions. But now that they have been lifted from me, I am ready to run for the post of President of FIDE. For this, I just need to be nominated by five countries”, Ilyumzhinov said. Needless to say, if he will be elected, his priority mission shall be “to restore the full glory of the Soviet and Russian chess school. So that the Russian flag flies at all FIDE competitions. I intend to talk about it with [U.S. President Donald] Trump, among other things”.
It remains to be seen, however, what decisions the incumbent FIDE President Arkady Vladimirovich Dvorkovich — who enjoys wide esteem throughout the chess community and the Kremlin’s trust in his ability to guarantee the motherland’s interest through informal diplomacy — and with him the very Russian Federation will take.
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