Arkady Dvorkovich got a good position – Newspaper Kommersant No. 142 (7343) of 08/06/2022

On Sunday, Arkady Dvorkovich will be re-elected as President of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), one of the largest and most prominent sports organizations. Despite the specificity of the circumstances surrounding the election, such as Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and the refusal of world champion Magnus Carlsen to participate in the next title match, Mr. Dvorkovich’s chances to keep the post seem extremely high. In any case, neither the Ukrainian Andrei Barishpolets nor the Frenchman Bashar Kouatly look like exceptionally dangerous competitors for him.

On Sunday, at the General Assembly of the International Chess Federation in Chennai, India, the election of its president will be held. Three candidates are running for the post: Russian Arkady Dvorkovich, Ukrainian Andrey Barishpolets and Frenchman Bashar Kuatli. These elections are the second in which Mr. Dvorkovich, the former Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation and head of the Skolkovo Foundation, is participating. FIDE, one of the largest sports structures, he headed in 2018. And the previous elections, in Batumi, were exceptionally sharp.

Arkady Dvorkovich was brought to the federation by the acute administrative crisis that she was going through. Because of him, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who had held it for a quarter of a century, was forced to leave the post of president. And with Mr. Dvorkovich, FIDE Vice-President Georgios Makropoulos, who had enormous influence in the chess world, competed, who was just considered the main initiator of the “putsch” that resulted in the departure of Mr. Ilyumzhinov. However, neither the loud support of a number of countries notable in chess, primarily Western ones, nor the administrative resource helped Mr. Makropoulos at that time. Arkady Dvorkovich won by a fairly solid margin – 103 votes to 78.

The Chennai elections will take place against a backdrop of seemingly unfortunate circumstances for Mr. Dvorkovich. The first is a special Russian military operation in Ukraine, because of which many domestic functionaries are now under enormous pressure, including those who, as the head of FIDE, prefer to distance themselves from politics as much as possible and do not publicly support Russian actions. The second circumstance arose quite recently. We are talking about the July refusal of the world champion Norwegian Magnus Carlsen to play in the next match for the title against the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi. Because of it, the rating of the duel, which is the main event in chess, will obviously suffer. It is assumed that the idea of ​​ignoring the match Mr. Carlsen was strengthened, in particular, by FIDE’s unwillingness to diversify its format.

However, several interlocutors interviewed by Kommersant in the chess community have no doubt that Arkady Dvorkovich’s chances of being re-elected are extremely high. Moreover, some of them predict that the Chennai elections will turn out to be “calmer” for him than the Batumi ones.

There are really good reasons to believe this. It is unlikely that FIDE congress delegates will be able to make serious claims to Arkady Dvorkovich related to the management of FIDE over the past four years (if, of course, Magnus Carlsen’s unexpected demarche is taken out of the equation). In any case, chess survived the pandemic quite normally, and now it has a tight competitive calendar and a whole generation of very young and very talented players. Many of them are currently playing at the World Chess Olympiad in Chennai for various teams. During these four years, there were no signs of the existence of a strong opposition to Mr. Dvorkovich within FIDE. And in conjunction with him – for the post of vice president – Viswanathan Anand, an outstanding Indian grandmaster, the 15th world champion, who enjoys enormous authority and respect in the chess environment, is running.

Still, apparently, more important is the fact that this time Arkady Dvorkovich’s competitors do not look really dangerous. Grandmaster Andrei Barishpolets, who lives in the USA, is a little-known figure in chess. And his “weight”, most likely, illustrates such a nuance. Formally native to Mr. Barishpolts, the Chess Federation of Ukraine actually initially supported not him, but director and producer Inal Sheripov, who lives in Belgium – he eventually withdrew his candidacy “for health reasons.”

Bashar Kuatli is well known to those who are fond of chess. He is a veteran of both chess journalism (as editor of the popular Europe Echecs) and chess politics. But the peak of Mr. Kuatli’s pursuit of it came in the 1990s, when he actively contributed to the overthrow of Florenio Campomanes, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov’s predecessor, and then he himself tried to become president. At the same time, recently Bashar Kuatli is far from being as energetic as before, and seemed quite satisfied with the vice-presidential status that he had after the appearance of Arkady Dvorkovich in FIDE.

Alexey Dospekhov