Arkady Dvorkovich, the Russian former deputy prime minister who has run the International Chess Federation since 2018, has stepped aside after the European Union placed him on its latest sanctions list. He faces a travel ban and asset freeze across all 27 member states. He says he is “voluntarily suspending” his duties but has not resigned, and he calls the decision “unlawful and unfair.”
The EU’s stated reason: Dvorkovich has publicly supported the annexation of Crimea, referred to occupied Ukrainian cities as “new territories” of Russia, and serves on the board of the Chess Federation of Russia, which has organized tournaments inside occupied areas of Ukraine.
But the real story is what this means for Russian influence in a sport the country has treated as an instrument of state power since the days of the Soviet Union.
For decades, chess was one of the Soviet Union’s most effective soft-power exports. From Botvinnik to Kasparov, the USSR — and later Russia — produced world champions of such consistency that the title seemed almost a Russian property. FIDE, founded in Paris in 1924, moved its headquarters to Moscow in the 1990s and has never really left Russian orbit, even though its official address is in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Dvorkovich, 54, was elected FIDE president in 2018 and re-elected in 2022. Under his leadership, Russian national teams were banned from international competition after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but critics say the ban was a cosmetic gesture that masked a deeper problem: the Kremlin’s slow takeover of the institution itself.
“We hope never to see this man in the chess world again,” said Volodymyr Kovalchuk, first vice president of the Ukrainian Chess Federation. “People who develop sport in the interests of an aggressor state have no place in senior international positions.”
Malcolm Pein, England’s representative to FIDE, called the sanctions “an earthquake and a massive diplomatic victory for Ukraine” that “may significantly reduce Russia’s influence in the world of chess — something which, formerly the USSR and then Russia, has dominated and used as a tool of soft power since the Second World War.”
Dvorkovich disputes this framing. “FIDE is based in Switzerland,” he said. “Our top executives include people from India, Norway, Latvia, the US, Italy, France, and other countries around the globe. Accusations about ‘Russian influence’ are false and contradicted by how FIDE is governed.”
Whether that defense holds will be tested in September 2025, when FIDE holds its next presidential election. Dvorkovich had intended to run again. His capacity to campaign effectively from outside Europe — unable to set foot in the continent that hosts most of the game’s major events and sponsors — is an open question.
Chess is enjoying a boom: high streaming audiences, growing sponsorship money, celebrity players like Magnus Carlsen drawing casual fans. The game’s next leader, if not Dvorkovich, will inherit an organization with real resources and real influence. The question is whether that influence will still flow along Russian channels.
Ukraine’s government hailed the sanctions as “an important victory.” It is, at minimum, a signal that the EU sees chess not as a game above politics but as a domain where Russia’s war has consequences — even on a board of 64 squares.