Russia has expanded the list of “terrorists and extremists” with another illustrious name, that of the former world chess champion Gari Kasparov, who after abandoning professional practice as a chess player in 2005 went into politics and became one of the figures of the opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The name of Kasparov, who has been living outside Russia for years, appeared this Wednesday as a member of that list on the website of Rosfinmonitoring, the Russian financial supervisor.
According to Russian law, after a person is included in the register, banks must cease maintenance of his accounts and freeze his funds.
Kasparov, born in 1963 in Baku (today the capital of Azerbaijan, then part of the USSR), was one of the voices of the exiled Russian opposition who, after the death of the prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an Arctic prison, pointed directly to the Russian president. . “Putin is Navalny’s murderer,” he wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
Among the latest famous names included in this list of “terrorists and extremists” is Boris Akunin, one of the most widely read contemporary writers in Russia, very critical of the war in Ukraine.
Gari Kasparov became the thirteenth world chess champion in 1985, after defeating fellow Soviet Anatoly Karpov at the beginning of perestroika in Moscow. The championship was interpreted as a duel between the old Soviet regime, represented by the latter, and the aperturismo, represented by the new, young champion.
At the head of the USSR or Russian national team, Kasparov won the Chess Olympics eight times, the most important team competition in this sport, which is held every two years.
He lost the world champion title in 2000 in a match held in London against his former student Vladímir Krámnik. Five years later he decided to end his regular participation in professional competitions and become a political activist.
In 2012 he was part of the Coordinating Council of the Russian opposition, which was formed after the largest protests against Putin. A year later he left Russia and continued his anti-Kremlin activism from abroad. He has positioned himself against the military campaign in Ukraine, launched by order of Putin in February 2022.
In May 2022, the Russian Ministry of Justice included Kasparov on its list of “foreign agents.” In the last two years, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Justice have declared several forums and initiatives in the creation of which the former chess player participated, such as the Free Russia Forum, a conference of the Russian opposition that is held twice a year, “undesirable organizations.” in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania.
