How Garry Kasparov went from being chess champion to ‘terrorist’ in Russia

Garry Kasparov has several honours to his name. Chess champion, grandmaster, greatest ever chess player, and now, even terrorist.

The former world chess champion, on Wednesday, was added to Russia’s list of “terrorists and extremists.” Interestingly, Kasparov’s name on the list is marked with an asterisk, which means that a criminal case has been opened against him on terrorism charges, Meduza wrote.

We take a closer look at how the 60-year-old has gone from being Russia’s most prominent chess player to being added to the ‘extremist and terrorist’ list in the country.

On Russia’s ‘terrorists and extremists’ list

On Wednesday, Russia’s financial monitoring agency, Rosfinmonitoring added former chess champion Garry Kasparov to its state list of “terrorists and extremists.” However, no proper reason or explanation was provided for the move. The listing restricts client bank transactions, requiring users to get approval every time they access their accounts.

On hearing the news, Kasparov, who no longer resides in Russia and lives in New York City, expressed amusement at the addition of his name to the list, calling it an honour. He also wrote on X that the citation was more reflective of “Putin’s fascist regime”.

A report by the Politico quoted him as saying, “Today would be a good day to add Russia, Putin and all his cronies to the state sponsors of terror list,” referring to a US list of countries found to have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.”

He also told CNN that it was obvious that the Kremlin was using “every tool at their disposal to silence the criticism”. “It reminds us of living inside George Orwell’s book, 1984. Those who are really killing people, those who are terrorists like Putin and his gang, they are calling us, who have been advocating peaceful transition to democracy in Russia, terrorists.”

Notably, Kasparov was designated by the Kremlin as a “foreign agent” in May 2022 over alleged financing that he received from Ukraine. In fact, since retiring from chess, he has been one of Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critics.

Chess master-turned-Putin critic

But it wasn’t always like this for Kasparov. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan in what was then the Soviet Union, Kasparov became the youngest world champion at the age of 22 in 1985. Such was his chess prowess that he held on to the number one ranking in the chess world for a record 255 months — until his retirement in 2005.

After quitting chess, he became more involved in politics and soon even emerged as a vocal and powerful voice against current strongman Vladimir Putin. He created the United Civil Front whose main goal was to “work to preserve electoral democracy in Russia”. He vowed to “restore democracy” to Russia by restoring the rule of law.

Two years later, in 2007, he led several agitations, during which he and his supporters were arrested by the Russian authorities. He was also jailed for five days for carrying out the protests. It was also in this year, that Kasparov decided to contest the elections against Putin. However, that attempt didn’t go too far, as he claimed that his party, the Other Russia coalition, was being suppressed by the Russian government.

However, that didn’t stop him from his criticism of Putin. He continued to question Putin’s foreign policy of intimidating former Soviet republics that should be close allies, while fostering ties with Iran, North Korea and China. Moreover, he has accused Putin of stripping the media of all its powers, stifling political opponents and independent business people, and undercutting the essential institution of democracy: free and fair elections.

In 2011-12, he was one of the leading forces behind the protests in Russia, which demanded for free and fair elections. It was then that he was beaten and this spurred him to leave Russia permanently in 2013, seeking refuge in New York City, in the United States.

In 2015, he also authored the book, Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped. In the book, he likened the Russian leader to Hitler. Moreover, he argues that the world’s democracies should come together and fight against dictators.

In a 2021 interview with The Guardian, Kasparov also lamented about how things had worsened in Russia. At one point during that interview, the former chess champion actually said that things had gone so bad in Russia that he was unsure whether he would prefer to live under Putin or Soviet communism in the 1970s and early 80s.

In the same interview, he also said of Putin, “Putin’s interest, if we use a chess analogy, is to make sure that the game is not played by any rules, unless he chooses them. He wants to ruin the world that was built after the second world war, one that was based on compromise, consensus, and respect for treaties. The international community has to face up to that.”

Raising his voice against the war

Kasparov has also been loud and clear in his criticism of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, which began in 2022. He along with other public figures founded the Anti-War Committee, calling on the international community to declare Russian leaders “war criminals.”

He also warned NATO countries that Putin will bring upon them “an even greater catastrophe”. In a series of posts on X, he had written, “We are witnessing, literally watching live, Putin commit genocide on an industrial scale in Ukraine while the most powerful military alliance in history stands aside… This is already World War III. Putin started it long ago & Ukraine is only the current front.”

He had further written, “There is no waiting this out. This isn’t chess; there’s no draw, no stalemate. Either Putin destroys Ukraine and eventually hits NATO with an even greater catastrophe, or Putin falls in Russia. He cannot be stopped with weakness.”

In 2023, he once again spoke out against the Ukraine war, and called Russia a “mafia state”. He also noted then that for Putin to fall, it was mandatory that Ukraine triumphed in the war.

With inputs from agencies