Love in the Time of Cholera

A woman walks outside a shopping mall as black smoke rises over an oil refinery in the south-eastern suburbs of Moscow, Russia. Photo: AFP/Getty Images.

The Sabbatical Year

In spite of an announcement by an official of the Swiss Chess Federation that 12th Women’s World Chess Champion Alexandra Konstantinovna Kosteniuk, 38, to be switching from the Chess Federation of Russia to the Swiss Chess Federation from January 1, 2024, no official confirmation has yet been received from any of the concerned parties. According to indiscretions, Kosteniuk, who enjoys a dual citizenship as a Russian and as a Swiss by virtue of her first marriage to a Swiss-born citizen, would postpone her change of federation for an additional year in order to save the Swiss Chess Federation from paying the transfer fee of $10,000 dollars due to the Chess Federation of Russia. However, in an interview with Матч ТВ (Match TV), Grandmaster Sergei Vladimirovich Rublevsky, head coach of the Russian women’s chess team, expressed strong doubts about the reliability of the news: “I learned the news only this morning [January 2], somehow it came up on my phone. So far there is nothing special to comment on, since there have been no official notifications from FIDE to the Chess Federation of Russia about her transfer. As far as I know, even the International Chess Federation has not received a notification from the Swiss side. I would like first to see an official statement from FIDE, and then, perhaps, Alexandra Konstantinovna herself will say something. So far, this is fortune-telling on the coffee grounds. It is completely incomprehensible why this information was published”, he said. However, when asked if Kosteniuk ever hinted anything to him in regard to such an eventuality, Rublevsky answered: “We didn’t talk about it. We’ve had very little contact lately. We congratulated each other on the New Year. On that occasion she did not definitely tell me anything about her possible transfer”.

As they say, the threat is stronger than the execution. Photo: Maxim Bogodvid/RIA Novosti.

Actually Factually

In a talk show interview on Rete 4, Under-Secretary of the Presidency of the Council with responsibility for the security of the Republic, Franco Gabrielli, gave his impression on the Bucha killings (as far as it is known so far): “Doubtless it was a massacre, but we have to be very cautious about responsibilities. In such cases, one needs to strip away self-confidence and Manichaeism”. Such words, coming from a high-profile official, do suggest one should be careful not to jump to hasty conclusions. “Also because if there are situations that can be represented in different ways, the damage to the credibility of a narrative may be devastating”, Gabrielli says. “Let’s stick to facts, let’s stick to satellite analysis, let’s stick to eyewitness accounts, always bearing in mind that wars bring with them forms of degeneration and mystification. I’m always suspicious of easy, simple answers to complex problems”, especially when such answers are dictated by “prejudice in favour of one rather than another”.