Former Russian citizen and sanctioned businessman Timur Turlov invited a freelance advisor to the Office of the President (OP) of Ukraine Mykhailo Podolyak to join his team in the election for the president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE). He agreed, and the Chess Federation of Ukraine declared an "attempted raider seizure".
Timur Turlov is an entrepreneur and financier, owner of the Russian investment company “Freedom Holding Corp”. He was born in Moscow, but has lived in Kazakhstan since 2010 and changed his Russian citizenship to Kazakh in 2022. In 2023, he headed the Kazakh Chess Federation.
Since 2022, Turlov, as well as the Ukrainian branch of his company “Freedom Finance Ukraine”, have been under Ukrainian sanctions.
Now Turlov has put forward his candidacy for the position of the FIDE head. The elections are scheduled for September 24-27. This week, on September 21, Turlov wrote in X post that Ukraine is one of the leading chess nations in the world, and invited Podoliak to join his team and become FIDE vice-president if he is elected.
Podolyak agreed and stated that he was "very interested in international federations leaving intrigue and politics behind".
The Chess Federation of Ukraine (CFU) responded to this situation. They emphasized that they do not support Turlovʼs candidacy in the elections and have not received any proposal to nominate a representative of Ukraine to his team.
The federation also noted that it did not authorize Podoliak to represent CFU on Turlovʼs team, and Podolyak himself has no connection to the federation or chess life in Ukraine, has never helped CFU or provided it with any support, and has no connection with FIDE.
"According to the FIDE statute, the inclusion of a representative of a certain country in the leadership of the federation requires nomination from the national chess federation of the country that this person represents. Therefore, the actions of Timur Turlov and Mykhailo Podoliak are only correspondence between two private individuals on social networks. CFU considers these actions illegal and an attempt to raid the federation," the federation emphasized.
CFU demands that Turlov and Podoliak refute their statements and is ready to defend its interests in court.
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