Garry Kasparov's Blog, page 14

Keynote at the Nordic Business Forum | Helsinki | September 20-21, 2022

“You can’t negotiate with cancer. All you can do is cut it out,” said Garry Kasparov about Putin yesterday during his surprise visit at #nbforum2022

Thank you Garry for this very timely keynote! #westandwithukraine

Watch his full keynote: https://t.co/iDkSizJpYf

— Nordic Business Forum (@NBForumHQ) September 22, 2022

Missed the discussion between @Kasparov63 and @MikaAaltola about Russia and Ukraine at #nbforum2022? We suggest you take the 15-minutes to watch this extremely timely interview now: https://t.co/bmzGI9gvos

— Nordic Business Forum (@NBForumHQ) September 23, 2022

Kasparov underlines that when dealing with Putin, we can’t pretend that business and politics are separate things. How did he spend the money he received from Europe for Russian energy resources? To prepare military forces.@Kasparov63 #Ukraine #nbforum2022

— Nordic Business Forum (@NBForumHQ) September 21, 2022

Thank you @NBForumHQ for making a statement. Thank you @Kasparov63 for reminding us that we didn’t listen to you. Now we do. Feel honoured and privileged to be here. Most important key note speech ever. #nbforum2022 pic.twitter.com/u2Aq0PqGBb

— Satu Huuhtanen (@SatuHuuhtanen) September 21, 2022

Great to see my friend @OfficialSting in Helsinki today. More fun without a chess board between us as in Times Square in 2000! I also appreciate his stand against Putin’s war. pic.twitter.com/KwNgucfF5g

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 22, 2022

Keynote at the Atlantic Club of Bulgaria | Sofia | September 19, 2022

There are always those who try to create gray areas to cloud our moral vision. Politics is murky, but life and death are not. Invasion, murder, and genocide are not. True evil exists and supporting Ukraine is required to fight it. https://t.co/dCfgdKbZ74

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 19, 2022

Interview with Garry Kasparov-this Saturday on NOVA pic.twitter.com/i0MdGAZHzH

— Desislava Banova (@dbanova) September 22, 2022

https://t.co/qjLJBeRhmP

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 22, 2022

This article is a reprint. You can read the original at Radio Bulgaria.

“BTA’nın aktardığına göre, Sofya’da düzenlenen konferansta, Güneydoğu Avrupa bölgesinden ülkelerin Ukrayna’daki savaş bağlamında savunma ve siber güvenlik alanında karşılaştıkları zorluklar tartışılıyor.

Forumun organizatörü, dünya çapında yeni pazarlar için önde gelen teknolojilere ve yeniliklere erişim sağlayan İsrailli Improvate platformudur.

Forumun ev sahipliğini platformun danışma konseyinde yer alan (2012 – 2017) Bulgaristan Cumhurbaşkanı Rosen Plevneliev üstleniyor.

Foruma katılan eski dünya satranç şampiyonu ve yapay zeka uzmanı Garry Kasparov, katılımcılara hitaben yaptığı konuşmada, Ukrayna’daki askeri eylemlerin başlangıcında, askeri bir saldırı ve büyük ölçekli bir siber saldırı olmak üzere, Rusya’nın tüm cephelerde büyük bir saldırı düzenlediğini ve özgür dünyanın avantajlarını göstermek amacıyla şimdi Ukrayna’daki savaşın hem çevrimiçi hem de çevrimdışı olarak yürütüldüğünü söyledi.”

Chess 9LX Champions Showdown | St Louis Chess Club | September 13-16, 2022

Here we go! https://t.co/d6USFKOg9Z

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 13, 2022

The 2022 Champions Showdown: Chess9LX started in St Louis today!
13th World Champion @Kasparov63 is back in action!#Chess9LX #garrykasparov
Pictures @LennartOotes @STLChessClub pic.twitter.com/G9RHGhIOhx

— Kasparov Chess (@Kasparov_Chess) September 15, 2022

It’s always exciting when Garry Kasparov plays #chess!#ultimatemoves #garrykasparov pic.twitter.com/TeianNiPjN

— Saint Louis Chess Club (@STLChessClub) September 13, 2022

pic.twitter.com/NvNy72MREi

— Grand Chess Tour (@GrandChessTour) September 12, 2022

Very kind, Maurice. Unfortunately, chess is only a small part of my life these days and, with so many elite players here this week, St. Louis is no gangsta’s paradise! https://t.co/6or2ne3rVg

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 15, 2022

Well, I definitely did not have any luck yesterday despite all your wishes, as I ruined several nice positions and my opponents offered me no senior discount! Try, try again… https://t.co/SHIJI4ZVWY

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 15, 2022

After another tough day on the results table for me, a friend said this is what happens with so little preparation. No, I corrected him, this is what happens with NO preparation! But some very interesting games and ideas I was happy with. Just no consistency. https://t.co/dilnOjSQ5X

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 16, 2022

Misinformation and propaganda in the authoritarian internet | Avast | September 13, 2022

An important message @Kasparov63 about the dangers of current new propaganda networks.https://t.co/htraY8FCKL

— Avast (@Avast) September 14, 2022

By Garry Kasparov

This article is a reprint. You can read the original at Avast.

“In the context of the current war in Ukraine and increased authoritarian aggression against free and open discourse on the internet, it’s now more important than ever to warn our European audience about the dangers of current new propaganda networks.

On my sixth birthday, my father gifted me a globe of the world. It is the best birthday present I have ever received. You see, I grew up in a cramped apartment in Baku, Azerbaijan. But even in our small corner of this world on the edge of the Soviet Empire behind the Iron Curtain, when my father and I read Stefan Zweig’s book on Magellan together, I could dream of the vast world beyond. Night by night, we traced our fingers along the boundless oceans of that globe and I marveled at all there was to see beyond the confines of the Soviet world.

Ondrej Vlcek and I both grew up the under the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. We read the same propaganda in our history textbooks, and learned never to trust the misinformation spewed at us. The Evil Empire was built on a castle of lies: even as children, both of us could see that. Our shared childhood experiences provided a strong basis for our conversation in Paris, at the 6th VivaTech conference in June 2022. In the context of the current war in Ukraine and increased authoritarian aggression against free and open discourse on the internet, Ondrej and I felt it was more important than ever to warn our European audience about the dangers of current new propaganda networks.

The year my father gifted me my globe, I began to play chess. Ten years after that, I won my first international tournament. As I began to fly abroad for competitions, I found myself one of the very few Soviet citizens with the privilege to see the world outside for myself, unfiltered by propaganda and misinformation — although always watched by Soviet secret police KGB’s  handlers.

In 1983, I saw my first home computer in person — at a competition in London. I asked for one from the competition organizers and carried it back on my Aeroflot flight: probably the first personal home computer in Baku. In 1986, I signed a deal with Atari and took as payment 53 of their newest computers. I brought them back to Moscow, and used them to create the first ever youth computer club in the Soviet Union. I had seen beyond the propaganda with my own eyes. I hoped these tools could show bright young children that they too could imagine a wider world–the real world. It worked, for a while, but little did I suspect that the limitless world soon available online would become a powerful force for misinformation as well as for the truth. The war didn’t end, but the battlefield grew exponentially larger.

Since Vladimir Putin first took power in Russia on the last day of 1999, he has steadily removed Russia from the free world, including access to information. The internet was mostly left alone at first, since most Russians got their news from television, which was completely under state control by 2008. But as the crackdowns on rights and civil society continued, online news sites and social media came under scrutiny and control. My own kasparov.ru news website was blocked in Russia 2014, along with others. Censorship wasn’t enough, however, and hundreds of propaganda sites with thousands of employees polluted every aspect of the Russian online sphere with propaganda and misinformation. People were locked up for dissenting tweets, while every Russia was being locked behind a digital wall of propaganda.

Ondrej’s team at Avast began to track the development of the Kremlin machine, and Ondrej and I have watched as the propaganda networks proliferated. First in Russia, then in the Russian-speaking sphere, and today in many languages all over the world to spread disinformation. Today, Putin’s misinformation bot networks, malware factories, and cyber gangs are more sophisticated than any international mafia.

While these malicious campaigns target and exploit the free world’s right to free speech, their effects are greater in unfree countries like Russia. The day of our talk, Avast released its Digital Wellbeing Report, in which it assessed the relation between a country’s digital freedom when it comes to censorship, and limitations and manipulations of online discussions, and the country’s cybersecurity and consumer privacy status quo. One takeaway from the Avast Digital Wellbeing Report was that cyberattacks are more common in less free nations, where private safeguards and public regulation are weaker than in democracies. This is logical to me, as I’ve always said that dictatorships fear their own people more than anything. Places like Russia and Saudi Arabia are more likely to use malware and spy tech against their own citizens than protect them from such attacks.

Avast’s Digital Wellbeing Report: Total score and status of freedom (higher is better) vs. risk of encountering a cyberattack based on Avast data (lower is better)

Russian troll factories dominate social media and comment sections, defame dissidents around the world, and spread misinformation. I never thought I’d see the day when an American president would repeat Russian propaganda over the information provided by his own intelligence community. So what can we do to fight back?

First, companies need to follow the example of good global citizens. To take one example — selected entirely at random of course! — after Putin began his latest war, many large companies suspended operations in Belarus and Russia while bolstering support for digital protection in Ukraine. Secondly, knowing if information comes from a source you should trust is vital. You can use a tool like Avast’s News Companion that gives users information about English language  US news sites they visit to help them better understand the quality of information they are receiving. Furthermore, you can share it with your circle to empower them to fight the spread of misinformation. We all have a role to play in the fight against misinformation and authoritarian fake news.

My message to the free world media works for individuals, too. Don’t amplify the lies, just keep repeating the truth. Research has shown that repeating blatant lies and fakes by refuting them still spreads them. Even sober fact-checking can create doubt by taking falsehoods seriously, a technique well-known to propagandists. There is only one truth and an unlimited number of lies, so the truth is outnumbered.

Our elected leaders need to stand up for a free and open internet as a human right. In fact, French President Macron stopped by during the conference, but the resulting security lockdown prevented me from having to make the difficult choice of whether to confront him over all his dithering and hedging his support for Ukraine’s fight for freedom against Putin’s invasion.

Public pressure can encourage companies to take stands in the fight for good against evil. And all of us need to do what we can in our day-to-day lives to guard against fake news, be responsible citizens of the internet, and stand up for the truth. When authoritarians deal in lies, only the truth will set us free.”

Exclusive Interview with Chess Champ and Russian Opposition Leader Garry Kasparov | Kyiv Post | September 12, 2022

Thank you @officejjsmart. I’ve been asked many times for many years how and when Putin will fall. I always said that I don’t know, but that the good news is Putin doesn’t know either! One small crack can quickly destroy the dam. https://t.co/mzfJK6qxT4

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 12, 2022

This article is a reprint. You can read the original at the Kyiv Post.

By Jason Jay Smart

“Garry Kasparov, considered to be one of the greatest chess players in history having held the number one spot for a record-setting 255 months, and a leading voice in the Russian opposition, sat down with the Kyiv Post’s correspondent Jason Jay Smart to discuss how the West can pressure Putin, the scandal embroiling the chess world today, and what the future of Ukraine will be.

How do you think that Putin’s calculus about the war in Ukraine has changed?

Well, analyzing war games is not the same as chess games. However, judging from what I have heard and can analyze, it looks clear that Ukraine is doing much better. It’s still too early to say that it’s done. We will still have many more months of exhaustive fighting because Russia still has many more resources to throw into the flames of the war. However, the news is encouraging.

What’s changed?

There’s a factor that’s underestimated by the West: It’s the psychological factor. Morale is always a problem, just as is military equipment. And today, the morale of the Russian soldiers is deteriorating. Alternatively, it seems that the Ukrainians are at the point where they’re willing to bear any cost to liberate their country and defeat the enemy.

The continuation of the war will have a dramatic effect inside of Russia. You have wounded soldiers coming back to the poor countryside. We don’t know the exact numbers but the latest leak from the Ministry of Defense put the death toll at 50k. That’s a big number to deal with, even for Russia.

Those who were mobilized or were wounded will cause chaos. Here in America we know this post-war syndrome. These returning soldiers will cause problems.

The situation in Russia will deteriorate. The war in Ukraine isn’t going Russia’s way. Sanctions have not destroyed the country but they continue biting. They are having an effect.

So, combined – between the war in Ukraine going badly and sanctions – we will see if Putin is able to maintain his grip on power.

You understand Putin and how he and the power structure around him thinks. What are they doing with the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant? Also, do you think that Putin would use nuclear weapons?

All of these questions about nukes are very hypothetical. Putin has never dealt with situations like this one. This crisis is different for him.

Putin’s been lucky that he has always been able to escape. His opponents always folded their cards instead of calling his bluff. I think we’re now at the point in history where even the very mediocre leadership of the free world realized that we had no other choice but to call Putin’s bluff.

I think that Putin realizes his tricks won’t work as they did before. That’s why we aren’t hearing the same bold threats, the brazen threats, from Putin’s generals or Putin’s entourage who were formally saying “we will use whatever weapons,” etc. They seem to be finding a middle ground: Not to drop threats all together, because they understand that If NATO is dragged in, then it would be a disaster for them.

Then what’s next?

Basically, the war is lost. If you look at all of the objectives that Putin set for the war, all of them have failed. All of them. So, continuing the war is the only way for Putin to stay in power. He wants to create extra chaos in the free world hoping that a new window will open for him. It’s really just a protracted agony. It is cynical and stupid, but Putin is willing to put thousands of civilians into graves in the months to come before the whole of Ukraine is liberated, if that will allow him to maintain power.

You just had your Congress for a Free Russia a few days ago. How was it? What do you see coming with the opposition?

It was a huge success. We had over 500 participants in Vilnius. The biggest we ever had.

We had a very impressive list of foreign participants: High level leaders. They demonstrated that the Russian Action Committee, the group I founded with Mikhail Khodorkhovsky, is the main voice of the Russian opposition in exile.

We had the former President of Estonia and Ministers of Foreign Affairs from Lithuania and Latvia. Interestingly, the British parliamentarian who headed the Foreign Affairs Committee, was appointed as Minister of State Security by Liz Truss just a couple of days later.

We had a great panel on sanctions with Bill Browder and Ambassador Mike McFaul.

I ran a panel called “The war in Ukraine: The last war of Russia?” There’s a group I call the coalition of the willing: Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and Great Britain.

What do you propose the West do now?

We believe that the free world must do everything to help Ukraine win. There’s no other solution: Unconditional victory of Ukraine – and the unconditional defeat of Putin.

The only chance to defeat Putin’s fascism is to raise the Ukrainian flag in Sevastopol, Crimea. That’s the top priority for anyone who wants to see our planet safe from Putin’s existential threat of destruction.

We believe that Europe should demonstrate its resolve by banning Russian tourism all together –  total ban on Russian tourists.

At the same time, we believe that those Russians who wish to leave Putin’s “North Korea,” as we jokingly call it, and who wish to come to “South Korea” and the free world, should be given this opportunity if they sign a decree simple that the war is criminal, Putin’s regime is illegitimate, and that Ukraine is whole. We are seeking a combined approach.

We hope that friendly governments will understand and that’s why we are already talking to a number of governments about this. There’s likely around 100,000 Russians who are ready to completely cut all ties with Putin’s Russia.

Let me ask you a couple of questions from Kyiv Post readers: What do you think of the NRA

It’s fake.

Who is behind the organization then?

I don’t know. I’m not an expert in fakes. You know, Ponomarev is using this to advertise his own agenda. I think it’s falling apart, and unfortunately, it has had some ramifications for people inside of Russia as the Putin government has been arresting people inside of Russia because of this. These fakes could have lethal effects for people who could otherwise be safe.

The chess world has been rocked by a scandal as top-ranked champion Magnus Carlsen quit the St. Louis Sinquefield Cup a couple of days ago. What do you make of this?

I don’t know all the details about the scandal in St. Louis where Carlsen pulled out after his match with Hans Niemann and he came just short of accusing his opponent of cheating. And I don’t wish to speculate.

But, I think that Carlsen’s decision is unacceptable. As a world champ he has a responsibility to the game. Showing this disrespect to the players and organizers, St. Louis is the most prestigious tournament in the world, and it is absolutely wrong to do what he did.

Carlsen must at least provide an explanation. You can’t just walk away and so far, he’s done just that. That bothers me a lot.

Do you think that Putin is a threat to you and your security?

Probably. But thinking about it doesn’t help.

If there was something that you could tell Ukrainians: What would you tell them?

Their heroism is so refreshing at a time of cynicism. I wish them strength. I believe that we all owe them big. I don’t think we could ever compensate them for the sacrifices they’ve made, not just for their country, but for freedom around the world.

As a Russian citizen – though with the longest record of fighting Putin – I still feel responsible for the suffering that the Ukrainians are suffering and caused by Putin’s criminal regime. We will never be able to repay Ukraine for their sacrifices, heroism, and spirit. Ukraine is a beacon to the free world.

What Ukraine has done has reminded all of us that we had values and ideas worth fighting for – and dying for.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.”

The War in Ukraine with General Ben Hodges – Ep 1 | RDI | September 8, 2022

“Russian victory is not inevitable. Russian defeat is.”
Follow @Renew_Democracy and our new video series with @NewDebateInc and Lt Gen Ben Hodges (@general_ben) for quick and incisive battlefield updates, their strategic importance, and the road ahead. https://t.co/bcZFaQQUWS pic.twitter.com/AM4TrzxarO

— Renew Democracy Initiative (@Renew_Democracy) September 6, 2022

Opinion: The sanctions against Russia still have holes. Here’s how to plug them. | Washington Post | September 8, 2022

Putin’s total war on Ukraine must be met with total isolation of Russia. The Russian economy, and the mafia dictatorship that drains it, depend on Western tech. Close the net and cripple Putin’s war machine. I join @McFaul in this op-ed: https://t.co/WPEuoYv7mr

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 8, 2022

This article is a reprint. You can read the original at the Washington Post.

By Michael McFaul and Garry Kasparov

“Garry Kasparov is chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and the Human Rights Foundation. Michael McFaul is director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, a Hoover fellow at Stanford University and a contributing columnist to The Post.

The United States and other democracies around the world rightly responded to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by imposing new sanctions on Russia’s financial system, oil and gas exports, and certain individuals. These sanctions are more comprehensive than any other effort undertaken by the free world against a dictatorship the size of Russia.

They have certainly weakened the Russian economy. But only the most optimistic believed that sanctions would persuade Putin to change his mind and withdraw his army from Ukraine. Instead, the purpose of these sanctions should be to limit Russia’s capacity to wage this war against Ukraine — to compel, not persuade, Putin to end his invasion. To date, there have been some successes, but the experience of the past six months also shows that there is much more to be done. We have several suggestions for measures that we think are worth taking.

Targeted export controls on sensitive technology have proved especially effective by limiting Russia’s ability to replenish precision weaponry. Over time, this disruption of sophisticated technology components, including first and foremost chips that Russia cannot make, will weaken Moscow’s military capabilities.

Now the democratic world must impose additional import restrictions on technologies such as aircraft parts, sonar systems, antennas, spectrophotometers, test equipment, GPS systems, vacuum pumps and oil-field equipment. Russia should be completely unable to obtain any high-tech imports, as ultimately most technology is dual-use. Any technology that helps the Russian economy also helps Putin kill more Ukrainians.

Over the long run, the exodus of tens of thousands of Russian high-tech workers triggered by Putin’s war also will further diminish Russia’s military industrial base. Moving forward, the West should do more to facilitate a massive Russian brain drain. Democratic countries should make it easier to accept Russian immigrants with technological expertise through a variety of residency and economic incentives. Europe and the United States must also make it easier for political and media opponents to Putin’s regime to immigrate, to help further divide Putin from the Russian people.

Sanctions also have interrupted foreign direct investment, causing food, drug and material shortages. Impressively, roughly a thousand foreign companies have exited Russia; most will never come back. This doesn’t just affect the range of available goods and services; it will also diminish technology transfer and innovation in a wide range of industries throughout Russia, especially in the energy sector.

But more should be done. Democratic governments must put more pressure on their companies that have not left Russia yet. Foreign enterprises helping Putin’s war machine, even through the simple act of paying taxes, should face sanctions, too. The international community also should compel countries such as Turkey, Georgia and Kazakhstan — which are currently helping to bypass existing sanctions — to halt ongoing smuggling operations.

Sanctions on Russian individuals have produced real and lasting results. The lengths to which Russian oligarchs have gone to circumvent or get off the sanctions list suggest that sanctions are working.

Yet sanctions have still not been imposed on thousands of Russian officials, party leaders, regional government heads, board members of Russian state-controlled enterprises, propagandists and celebrities supporting the war. It’s time to add them to the list. Individuals in third countries helping Putin — such as former oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, the de facto ruler of Georgia – should know they, too, will face sanctions unless they stop supporting Putin’s barbaric invasion. Any individual supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, even if indirectly or passively, should pay a cost.

To date, sanctions have been ineffective in targeting Russia’s fossil fuel exports, the primary source of income for Russia’s war effort against Ukraine. Tragically but predictably, Putin’s war dramatically pushed up global energy prices, producing short-term windfall profits for the Kremlin. Western leaders also consciously left in place loopholes in the sanctions regime so that that governments and companies could keep purchasing Russian energy. (Left untouched, for example, was Gazprombank, a key financial institution for Russia’s state-controlled natural gas corporation.)

The good news here is that more is already planned. By the end of the year, the European Union plans to make drastic cuts in fossil fuel imports from Russia, and the Group of Seven aims to implement an innovative idea of capping the price of Russian oil exports worldwide. The prospect of this price cap is already compelling Russia to sell oil at discounted prices. Democratic government leaders around the world must credibly signal their readiness to pressure their banks, insurers and shipping companies to enforce the price cap. Consumers living in the free world have to stop financing Putin’s war by buying Russian oil and gas.

Finally, democracies must signal their intention to maintain sanctions for as long as it takes to achieve three outcomes: Ukraine must regain all of its territory, including Crimea; Russia must pay war reparations to Ukraine in full; and Russian war criminals must be brought to justice. Leaders of the free world must avoid the temptation to offer partial sanctions relief for incremental changes in Russia’s war efforts, and they should never do anything regarding sanctions relief without endorsement from Ukraine’s government.

Expanding and sustaining sanctions will be costly to the United States, Canada and Europe. But this is the price we must pay for decades of failure to act against Putin’s authoritarian and imperial ways. Fortunately, nations of the free world pay this cost solely with money; Ukrainians are paying with blood.”

Enlisting Ukrainian Students to Promote Democracy in America | NYT | September 6, 2022

Ukrainian youth may save democracy, but not w/out the partnership of their US & global peers. @chefjoseandres @Kasparov63 @AVindman & I are launching a Ukrainian scholarship program w/ a pro-democracy twist. More from @NYTimes @BlakeHounshell: https://t.co/jFbqPozMdf

— Daniel Lubetzky (@DanielLubetzky) September 6, 2022

This article is a reprint. You can read the original at the New York Times.

By Blake Hounshell

“The founder of an energy bar company, a former chess champion, a retired U.S. Army colonel and a celebrity chef are teaming up to do something that is as unusual as the collection of people they have assembled.

They’re starting a $1 million pilot program for Ukrainian college students who are studying in the United States, underwriting their educations for a year so long as they are willing to become “ambassadors” for democracy — with the surprising target audience for that message being American students.

The program is being run by a pickup team that includes Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind bars; Garry Kasparov, a Russian American democracy activist who was once the world’s top chess grandmaster; Col. Alexander Vindman, the Ukrainian-born former National Security Council official who testified in Donald Trump’s first impeachment proceedings; and José Andrés, the chef-turned-humanitarian who feeds the world’s crisis spots.

Their intention is to scale up the program rapidly as other sponsors and board members join the project, which will be partly administered by the Institute of International Education, a global nonprofit. The institute will help select the first batch of 20 students this month, with input from the above co-chairs of the new group.

Ukraine and the United States are facing disparate threats to their democracies, and extremism, authoritarianism and disinformation are on the rise worldwide. With their relatively new democratic government, Ukrainians can provide a strong warning and a metaphorical call to arms to Americans, the new group argues.

“We’re doing this in part for strategic reasons,” Lubetzky said. “To awaken Americans about how we cannot take for granted the gifts we have about democracy and freedom and the rule of law.”

Lubetzky, who grew up in Mexico as the son of a Holocaust survivor before moving to the United States as a teenager, said he had two main motivations.

First, he said, he was inspired by the Ukrainian people’s fight against Russia’s invasion, and their struggle to preserve their fragile democracy in the face of all odds. And second, he said, he is deeply worried about the state of America’s own democracy, particularly after the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the subsequent persistence of falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election.

A former Soviet state, Ukraine adopted democratic institutions after the fall of the Iron Curtain — at one point overthrowing a pro-Russian government in what became known as the Maidan Revolution. That uprising deeply affected Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin leader, who saw in it the hand of the U.S. government. Putin responded to the revolution by annexing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and attacking the eastern portion of the country, and later by invading it outright.

Now, Ukraine’s T-shirt-wearing president, the former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, has become an unlikely international symbol of courage in the face of tyranny — so much so that one often comes across quasi-serious “Zelensky 2024” bumper stickers in parts of the United States.

Transforming their communities

“My father always saw the light in the darkness,” Lubetzky said. He told a story of how a Nazi guard at Dachau, the German concentration camp, threw a potato at the feet of his severely undernourished father — an act of kindness the guard clearly undertook at some personal risk.

Vindman, who is finishing his dissertation on the history of Ukrainian-American relations, is drawing on his experience with State Department-run education programs for international partners of the U.S. military. As an officer who did stints abroad in the former Soviet Union, including Moscow, Vindman saw the power of such programs — and wanted to recreate that experience for the estimated 1,700 Ukrainian college students in the United States.

“I saw how those people terraformed their own communities,” Vindman said — in other words, they became agents of change within post-Soviet society.

Andrés, the owner of Barmini, Jaleo and other high-end restaurants in Washington and elsewhere, is joining the initiative after his organization, World Central Kitchen, spent months feeding some of the millions of Ukrainian refugees who have fled to Poland and other neighboring countries.A damaged school in Buzova, Ukraine, that had been used by both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries.Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Ukraine’s civil society has been shattered by the war. According to an estimate by the World Bank, nearly 700,000 students have been displaced, while more than 2,000 educational institutions have been damaged — with around 200 of those destroyed by bombing or shelling.

“Despite incredible hardship, every single day, thousands of Ukrainian Food Fighters show up to provide nourishing meals and food aid to families,” Andrés said. “It is the young Ukrainians who are leading the way. They are the future, and we must invest in supporting them to rebuild and thrive.”

Applications for the initial batch of students will be open until Sept. 22, after which the Institute of International Education will begin vetting candidates. Those selected will receive financial support immediately, since the fall semester is already underway at most U.S. universities and colleges.

In addition to scholarship funding for one academic year along with a generous stipend to cover living expenses, the program will also entail counseling, mentoring, networking and events to allow the students to meet one another and learn to be evangelists for democracy here in the United States.

The applicants will be screened not just for financial need, academic achievement and English-language skills, but also for their capacity and enthusiasm for spreading democratic values to Americans. They’ll be asked to write a short essay as part of the application process.

Once they are in the program, the students will be supported with training materials and by the Renew Democracy Initiative, a nonprofit on whose board Kasparov and Vindman both serve.

For Lubetzky, the program reflects dueling emotions: inspiration and terror.

He has fretted for years about what he sees as the decline of democratic values in his adopted homeland. Recently, he began reading up on Weimar Germany and the rise of Adolf Hitler, trying to “connect the dots” and understand how an educated, sophisticated society descended into barbarism and fascism.

And while he acknowledged that the parallels to that period of world history are inexact — “I’m not saying Trump is anything like Hitler,” he emphasized repeatedly — he said he found it “terrifying” that he could “connect the dots” between that era and now.

Watching coverage of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol made him determined to funnel his resources into civic education and mutual understanding — with this new Ukrainian scholarship program being just one of many initiatives he has seeded or otherwise funded through his private foundation.

“These weaknesses in the American spirit are troubling,” Lubetzky said.”

Gorbachev’s true legacy: It’s far more complicated than most observers admit | NYDN Op-Ed | September 4, 2022

My article on Mikhail Gorbachev in @NYDailyNews. I met him once, on 20 Jan 1985, the day he sent Soviet troops into my home city of Baku, where they shot protesters. Gorbachev is best described as a successful failure. https://t.co/4Cj8jhjDuR

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 4, 2022

This article is a reprint. You can read the original in the New York Daily News.

“Mikhail Gorbachev died on Aug. 30. Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union, which itself died in his arms on Dec. 25, 1991. His legacy will be forever debated and is as controversial today as it was when he was on the global stage as the ruler of a collapsing superpower.

Did Gorbachev smother the feeble Communist state with his reforms, or did it die of natural causes despite his best attempts to resuscitate it? How much do cause and motive matter when the results were undeniably good? For the hundreds of millions of souls freed from totalitarian slavery, including my own, very little. For establishing the legacy of a historic figure, quite a lot.

Like the light of a long-dead star reaching Earth, we are still learning new things about the USSR and its demise 31 years later. I write about Gorbachev from my personal experience at the time and my interpretations of the official record, acknowledging that they are contrary to the most popular Western and ex-Soviet storylines about the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

I met Mikhail Gorbachev once, in Moscow on Jan. 20, 1990. I had just managed to evacuate my family from our home in Baku, Azerbaijan, under the cover of night to escape the deadly pogroms against Armenians in the city of my birth. I was invited by reformist Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev to speak with Gorbachev about the situation there, where nationalist independence elements were surging as the cracks in Soviet power became apparent.

FILE – Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is pictured in 1991. (Boris Yurchenko/AP)

Yakovlev hoped that sharing my personal experience with Gorbachev might help him see the gravity of the situation. Instead, my story was met with a single question: who should he appoint as the new First Secretary of the Communist Party in Azerbaijan, Ayaz Mutalibov or Hasan Hasanov? I was stunned. Who cared? Was he clueless about how far things had already gone, that there was no way back? This was nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and it turned out Gorbachev’s deadly emergency order to crush Azerbaijan’s political unrest had already been signed the day before. Twenty-six thousand Soviet troops were entering Baku the day I met with Gorbachev with my naïve hopes for peaceful de-escalation.

The troops fired into the protesting crowds, killing several hundred by most estimates, Azerbaijan’s “Black January.” This use of military violence was largely forgotten by the time Gorbachev again used force to kill civilians seeking independence in Lithuania and Latvia a year later. All these incidents were soon swept under the carpet of Gorbachev’s legend of refusing to use force to hold the USSR together.

There is an element of truth to any good legend, of course. Gorbachev had a genuine aversion to bloodshed, especially after he had caused it. His actions led to many deaths in many places, but he always pulled back from total violence, something that cannot be said about his Soviet predecessors or his Russian successors, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.

A darkly humorous saying about the Soviet Union, where I was born in 1963, is that it was a country with an uncertain past. Official history was often changed to suit the rulers of the present, a tradition that has continued with Putin and his efforts to rehabilitate the image and deeds of his predecessor Josef Stalin.

One thing I can say with certainty is that the reality of Gorbachev is far from the caricatures of both his Western worshipers and the Soviet diehards who hated him. He was not a champion of democracy who brought down the evil empire from within. Nor was he a secret agent of capitalism who sold out the great empire.

Faced with impending economic catastrophe and Ronald Reagan’s refusal to concede an inch on military drawdowns that would have provided relief, Gorbachev turned to awkward political reforms. He aimed for “socialism with a human face,” as theorized by the Czechs, but my retort was that Frankenstein’s monster also had a human face! As a clear beneficiary of the policies popularly known as perestroika (“reform”) and glasnost (“openness”), I admit I appear ungrateful to criticize. After all, had it not been for Gorbachev’s appearance, along with Yakovlev’s, I would never have been permitted to face regime favorite Anatoly Karpov for the world championship in our 1985 rematch, where I won the title.

So what was Gorbachev? Most of all, and thank God, he was a failure. He failed to hold together the socialist Soviet state despite his best efforts. Even after the collapse of the hardliner putsch to replace him, Gorbachev talked about saving the system. I have many doubts about the official story of the August 1991 coup, by the way, including the possibility it was coordinated by Gorbachev to preserve the USSR at the last. Regardless, it was foiled by Yeltsin and thousands of protesters taking to the streets of Moscow and rallying at the Russian parliament building.

That week symbolized the stark differences between Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Gorbachev was a political agoraphobic who tried to keep everything behind closed doors, to maneuver in the Supreme Soviet where he was unchallenged. Even when he could have won on a public ballot, in 1990 for president of the USSR, he declined, preferring a controlled vote in the Supreme Soviet. Yeltsin, for all his flaws as a statesman and person, was a natural-born populist at heart and realized the need to appeal to the people.

When Gorbachev finally did appear on a ballot, in 1996, he received less than 1% of the vote. This was not a matter of resentful Communists and nationalists. Even the Western-leaning Russian liberals and democrats considered him a contemptible failure and supported Yeltsin.

Gorbachev was the conductor of a steam train that was headed straight over a cliff when it ran out of coal. He emerged from the engine, coughing and covered in soot, and was hailed as a hero by onlookers. The train’s passengers, in contrast, had all watched in horror as Gorbachev tossed his cap and jacket into the furnace, hoping to move the train a few more feet toward the edge.

Gorbachev was in power, and the USSR fell. Because or despite? Gorbachev was clueless about the societal trends in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bloc, and he misjudged the impact of the reforms he felt forced to implement. He had so little sense of the frustration of the Soviet people that he never realized there could be no opening of a totalitarian system without its rapid downfall. The crack became a flood.

His eternal resentment of Yeltsin contributed to Gorbachev’s enthusiasm for Putin — ironically hand-picked by Yeltsin to succeed him in 1999. He saw Putin as restoring faded Soviet glory with tough talk and putting the state back in charge of corruption instead of Yeltsin’s privatized model. Gorbachev embraced his Western reputation as a Mandela-like figure, which obliged him to mildly condemn Putin’s accelerating crackdowns on Russian civil society and democracy. But that came well after his respected voice could have made a difference.

I retired from chess in 2005 to form an anti-Putin, pro-democracy coalition in Russia. The dreams we had in 1991 were being systematically destroyed by the former KGB lieutenant colonel. Our fragile democracy lasted just eight years as Putin dismantled every aspect of an open society — a free press, fair elections, an independent judiciary — one by one.

Today, most of my opposition colleagues are either in jail like Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza, dead like Boris Nemtsov, or in exile like me. And as I predicted in my 2015 book, “Winter Is Coming,” Putin is a Russian problem who would become a regional problem and then a global one. Ukraine is paying the price in blood for our failure to stop him, and still he must be stopped.

Alarmed by the increasing levels of extremism in American politics, I formed the Renew Democracy Initiative in 2017 to defend and promote the values of democratic society. It’s vital for citizens of democracies not to take their privileges for granted. So I was glad to hear President Biden bluntly address the need for Americans to wake up to the importance of institutions and the rule of law in his speech last Thursday. Calling out Donald Trump and his followers is playing politics too, but it’s democracy politics. Fomenting insurrection and denying election results is not.

Supporting institutions is what matters, not a person or a personality. We learned that in painful fashion with Yeltsin, who handed over the keys to our wobbly democracy to Putin, who found it all too easy to push over.

In his 1991 resignation speech, Gorbachev was already mythmaking his democratic credentials, as well as putting pressure on Yeltsin. As disingenuous as it was at the time, this line works as an epitaph for Russian democracy and a warning to others, whether their democracies are eight years old or 246.

“We have paid with all our history and tragic experience for these democratic achievements, and they are not to be abandoned, whatever the circumstances, and whatever the pretexts. Otherwise, all our hopes for the best will be buried.”

Kasparov is chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative.”

The Congress of Free Russia | Vilnius | August 31 – September 2, 2022

Chess evening in Vilnius tonight: The 13th world chess champion @Kasparov63 gives a simultaneous game session for the participants of The Congress of Free Russia with the participation of grandmaster Gennady Sosonko
Info: https://t.co/t8uacNBJAx pic.twitter.com/xd1qHMUnSj

— Mikhail Khodorkovsky (English) (@mbk_center) August 31, 2022

This article is a reprint. You can read the original at the Congress of Free Russia.

“The Congress of Free Russia will bring together Russian citizens who openly oppose Russia’s criminal war against Ukraine with representatives of European countries and international organisations that support the people of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s assault. The organiser of this event is the Russian Action Committee, a group of Russian civil society representatives who have individually all spent years combatting dictatorial forces in Russia and believe that we can achieve a free Russia by uniting in a single movement committed to the fight for freedom.

Attendees will include Russian opposition politicians, human rights activists, experts, journalists, and activists from anti-war movements and initiatives across Europe. The goal of the Congress is to unite the efforts of the most active anti-war elements of Russian society with those of their Western counterparts as we seek to build a global coalition in defence of Ukraine and against Putin’s regime.
Anyone who shares the provisions of the Statement of the Russian Action Committee can participate in the Congress.”