Garry Kasparov's Blog, page 17

Garry Kasparov at Consensus 2022 | Avast | June 11, 2022

Kasparov here in Austin… Consensus is insane, it feels like SxSW for Crypto. Everyone is here. pic.twitter.com/EQLH2pxd5D

— Maury McCoy (@MauryMcCoy) June 10, 2022

More from my simul today at #consensus2022 with @Avast. https://t.co/vpJaiE3caC pic.twitter.com/mWckf1tF4W

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) June 10, 2022

We are hanging out with @Kasparov63 at @consensus2022. Talking #crypto, U.S. #dollar, digital and personal freedom! Stay tuned! #Consensus2022 @annagolubova pic.twitter.com/JRBlDJXCUw

— Kitco NEWS (@KitcoNewsNOW) June 10, 2022

Day 2 @consensus2022 includes a panel with World Chess Champion @Kasparov63 and @CoinDesk Emily Parker. Garry discusses real world use cases for how crypto is being used for humanitarian efforts. #Consensus2022 pic.twitter.com/bgDe7bW9qa

— Concept Art House (@conceptarthouse) June 10, 2022

Kasparov: Putin is ‘the Main Threat for Global Security’ | Yahoo Finance | June 9, 2022

Chess Grandmaster @Kasparov63 on the Russia-Ukraine war: “I believe Vladimir Putin’s regime is the main threat for global security… I’ve been predicting this war for at least 7 years… we’re witnessing war crimes on an industrial scale… a battle between freedom and tyranny.” pic.twitter.com/iDBbllax5L

— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) June 9, 2022

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

“Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss crypto adoption and NFTs as well as the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Video Transcript

– Well you know him as one of the all time greats in chess, but now Garry Kasparov is taking a hard look at Bitcoin cryptocurrencies and NFTs. And we’ve got Gary himself here on the show today. He is, of course, a vast security ambassador and world chess champion. We’ve also got David Hollerith joining in on the conversation. Gary, it’s great to have you on today.

I want to first– we’re going to talk about your NFT launch from last year. But first I’m just curious how this evolution happened. Because we always hear your name and we think about chess. What piqued your interest in crypto?

GARRY KASPAROV: Technology. I was a pioneer in the game of chess bringing machines to help us with our preparation. As you remember, I even tried to fight the machines with mixed success. Yeah, and I believe that technology is a very important way for us to make all sorts of improvements. And for me, the crypto is a part of this process. It’s inevitable.

We can debate pros and cons, but at the end of the day, the world is turning into digital. And of course, the methods of payments will have to follow.

DAVID HOLLERITH: Hi, Gary Thanks for coming on the show. I know you’re also currently a security ambassador for the software company Avast. And given that, I understand you must be fully aware of the billions of dollars that cryptocurrency investors have lost over the last year through scams and hacks. And so I was sort of curious, you know, how do you think cryptocurrency investors and newcomers should sort of handle this kind of environment?

GARRY KASPAROV: Look, I think the amount of money that has been lost and you just can’t deny it. It’s a drop in the ocean compared to money that had been stolen from big banks through various hacking operations. Unfortunately again, this is us having benefits from new technologies also carrying new risks. And crypto is no different from other traditional, and what we think safe methods of organizing payments.

Every month, if not every week, we read about massive attacks on the most established financial institutions in the world, with millions and millions of accounts being hacked and data being removed. So again, it’s a shield and sword. And I’ve been working with Avast for six years and every new challenge requires new tools and new algorithms to fight back.

And while hackers are using AI, so the defense also is using AI. And I still think that we are ahead in this game. So I would not be too– I would not be panicking about the losses that happen. Again, I’m sorry for those who did it, but maybe just be more aware about the threats. And Avast, as other companies in this area of business, they’re doing absolutely best to offer protection of individual data.

DAVID HOLLERITH: And going back to NFTs, last year you launched an NFT collection. I was just curious in general what’s the value you see in NFTs? There are obviously thousands of projects out there. And do you own any yourself?

GARRY KASPAROV: No, I don’t own any one yet. But it’s just I think, again, it’s a reflection of the new demand of the public. Again, you may say it’s value is fictional, but as everything else, at the end of the day, things have value because we believe these things have value.

And I think that this industry that now is obviously facing setbacks as the whole crypto world, so we’ll come back. Because again, people want to see more and more elements of our life to be– to stay on digital side. And NFT is no exception. And I tried again, with limited success, so it’s more than $1.1 million at that rate was raised for collection of 32 NFTs.

But it was my general attempt to present my life in NFTs and I thought it was well received by the community.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Hey Gary, it’s Brian Cheung here. I mean, some of those images that we were just showing kind of highlight your time in Russia. And I wanted to kind of just shift gears now to what’s been going on in Ukraine. You’ve been a very outspoken critic of the Russian government and how they’ve been going about this invasion. You’re recently just added to a list of foreign agents by the Russian government. What do you think about what we’ve seen in Ukraine, especially now that this has gone on for a few months?

GARRY KASPAROV: Yeah, when the Russian government calls you foreign agent it means enemy of the state. So let’s be very clear about it. But again, I live outside of Russia in exile for almost 10 years. So I basically I don’t care how they call me, because I believe that this regime, Vladimir Putin’s regime, is the main threat for global security.

I’ve been saying it for years. I’ve been predicting this war for at least seven years since the publication of my book “Winter’s Coming” back in 2015. And now we are witnessing war crimes on an industrial scale. And the big problem is that the free world is yet to decide on the strategy.

Yes, Ukraine has been receiving support, vital support. But it’s not enough, not nearly enough for Ukraine to defeat Putin’s invading armies. And I don’t think that the free world should and can accept any other result but Ukrainians unconditional win that will lead to the liberation of Ukraine and the restoration of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Because if God forbid, Putin succeeds, then other countries like Poland or Lithuania could be targets, NATO countries. So it’s more than just fight for saving Ukraine. It’s a battle between front of the battle between freedom and tyranny.

– And Gary, on that front you have been critical of the West’s response, saying that Western leaders should not be, number one, helping Putin or legitimizing him. What should be the response? When you think about the sanctions haven’t been handed down. In the US, Russian oil has been banned. The EU has moved in that direction. What more do you think needs to be done and is ultimately the goal, should that be regime change?

GARRY KASPAROV: Look, I don’t want you to say regime change, because that’s that sounds frightening. But if you make it clear that sanctions will not be lifted until Ukraine is fully liberated and Crimea of course included, and reparations being paid, and we’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. Because at least one third of Ukraine has been decimated now.

Russia fired more than 2,500 missiles to Ukraine. This is a war that the world has not seen since World War II. And war criminals brought to justice. That basically equals regime change without saying that. But we don’t see yet political will. Great Britain, Poland, Baltic states, they are doing absolutely the best

France and Germany, they are just way, way behind and they’re trying to work on what they call saving Putin’s face and the United States is somewhere in the middle. Yeah, we hear statements from the White House, but as I recently point out in my Twitter, the American howitzers that been supplied to Ukraine, they didn’t have the most important part of that, which is the advanced electronics. So they are literally blind.

So it seems to me that the Americans and European allies, with the exception of Britain and Poland both, trying to find this balance and I think it’s absolutely unacceptable. Ukraine must be provided every tool, every weapon, every measure that is required for them to win this war.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah, very much a humanitarian issue still developing over there. Garry Kasparov, Avast security ambassador and world chess champion. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us. And thanks again to David Hollerith of Yahoo Finance.

GARRY KASPAROV: Thanks for having me.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Appreciate it.”

Garry Kasparov predicts the Winner of the Candidates and talks all things Chess! | Anna Rudolf | June 6, 2022

You can watch the original video at Anna Rudolf‘s YouTube channel.

Meeting with UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss | June 3, 2022

Thank you for having me, for listening, and, most of all, for acting on Ukraine with boldness and commitment. Once again, Britain is leading a fight for freedom. https://t.co/Lvrwx8j18j

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) June 3, 2022

— Liz Truss (@trussliz) June 3, 2022

Impressed and hopeful after my meeting with Foreign Secretary @trussliz, a leading representative of a new generation of European politicians who see Putin for what he is and have no illusions about the need to stand up to him in Ukraine and everywhere else. pic.twitter.com/eXLfy5lO7R

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) June 3, 2022

Check Europe or Checkmate Already | ABSL Summit 2022 | May 31, 2022

#ABSLSummit to jedno z ważniejszych wydarzeń w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej. To również okazja do zaprezentowania raportu rocznego, przedstawiającego globalne trendy, które wpływają na rozwój miast i regionów w Polsce. Gościem specjalnym tegorocznej edycji jest @Kasparov63 pic.twitter.com/nwHcyJZmsL

— Metropolia GZM (@metropoliagzm) May 31, 2022

This post is a reprint. You can see more at the ABSL Summit.

Follow along on the ABSL Summit’s social media.

“Garry Kasparov, chess grandmaster, former world chess champion, pro-democracy leader, global human-rights activist, and business speaker, will be a special guest at the ABSL Summit 2022: Facing a Challenging Future. 

The ABSL Summit is one of the most important events in Central and Eastern Europe, analyzing global trends and their impact on economic and social development. The main themes of this year’s ABSL Summit will cover building strong and sustainable businesses in the face of geopolitical, economic, and social changes. Garry Kasparov, along with representatives of the world’s largest companies, national and global administrations, academics, and other guests, including world-renowned experts like Al Gore former US Vice President and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, will discuss breakthrough global solutions, cutting-edge ideas and concepts that form our perception of the world we want to live in.

Our special guest at the ABSL Summit 2022 is Garry Kasparov, a former world chess champion who is now a human rights and political activist. Janusz Dziurzyński, President of ABSL, emphasized that: Garry Kasparov challenges his audiences with a blend of inspiration and insights that can only be delivered by a top performer. The charisma and bold perspective that have made Kasparov such a great figure in chess also make him a provocative speaker. Now, more than ever, business needs to learn how to think about the unknown, and how to look into the future. Scenario planning, known from the game of chess, works exactly like this. It helps deal with uncertainty. Every good chess player thinks several steps ahead in scenarios.

At the ABSL Summit, Kasparov will give a speech called Check Europe or Checkmate already. He will shed light on global issues, especially in times of geopolitical turbulence, based on his great knowledge of the realities of this part of the world. He outlined Putin’s moves seven years ago in his book titled Winter is Coming. Using the metaphor of chess, the question is whether there is still room to maneuver, or whether we are facing checkmate. Garry Kasparov will also explore the rich territory of chess as an analogy for business strategies. In chess, one of the most valuable tools – an invaluable tool, in fact – is the ability to predict and analyze, both the current situation, and its shifting dynamics, and after-the-fact analysis to see what went wrong. Politicians and managers, as well as master chess players, should think multiple steps ahead in order to be prepared for various scenarios – Garry Kasparov explains.

The organizer of the conference, which is to be held between May 30 and June 1, 2022 in the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra concert hall in Katowice, is the Association of Business Service Leaders (ABSL). The City of Katowice, one of the five most important centers of the business services sector in Poland, will host the event.

Marcin Krupa, Mayor of Katowice, said:  Katowice is a perfect example when it comes to how to act in the unpredictable world of business and politics, and how to manage changes so that long term benefits can be achieved. Katowice faced such a challenge three decades ago when we had to decide on the directions of development and reconcile them with environmental protection. Recently, change and uncertainty have been the only constant features of the reality in which we live and to which we have to adapt. Distinguished speakers at the ABSL Summit 2022 will certainly offer us interesting plans of action to counter global issues both on a local and strategic level.

The modern business services sector is a pillar that stabilizes the Polish economy. During the pandemic alone, a total of 13,500 new jobs were created in the centers, while the whole sector employs more than 355,000 people.”

How did the IR community get Russia/Ukraine so wrong? | Marginal Revolution | May 31, 2022

“When I google “who predicted Russia war against Ukraine” I get Mearsheimer, a retired Russian general, and a blind psychic, but no bevy of IR scholars.” ⁦@tylercowen⁩ on why ⁦@Kasparov63⁩ was more accurate than the academics. https://t.co/YyNqw1U0le

— Clive Davis (@CliveDavisUK) May 31, 2022

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

By Tyler Cowen

“In proper Tetlockian fashion, I thought I would look back and consider how well IR experts did in the time leading up to the current war in Ukraine.  In particular, how many of them saw in advance that a war was coming?  And I don’t mean a day or two before the war started, though there were still many commentators in denial at such a late point.

Where to start?  One might look at the mid-2021 words of the very smart Daniel Drezner:

Wertheim thinks that Ukraine could trigger a great-power war. Meh. In 2021 we have already had one round of Putin brandishing the sword on Ukraine, Biden standing firm, and the situation de-escalating. NATO’s deterrent power seems important to the region. To be honest I would be more worried about flash points in the Pacific Rim.

Drezner lived in the Donbas region for some while in the 1990s, so he is hardly a stranger to the relevant issues.

More recently Chris Blattman, who is also very able and very smart, wrote in February that Putin probably was not going to attack.  Chris has just published a very well-received major book titled Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Path to Peace.  Chris does not pretend he is a Ukraine/Russia expert (“I know very little about Ukraine or Russia”), but he does command the literature on war and violent conflict with very real authority.

John Mearsheimer is one who foresaw the very real possibility of a war against Ukraine.  I think he is quite wrong about NATO as the provocation, but if you are grading him on predictions alone obviously he wins some serious kudos.

See also this Scott Alexander post, though mainly I am looking for somewhat earlier predictions.  By December 2021 a lot of us knew because it was pretty obvious (as for Scott’s puzzlement over me, due to the information flows I am sometimes in, I am not always in a position to make all my predictions fully public).

Garry Kasparov is another one who was right about the motives and the willingness of Putin to engage in further violent conquest, and I will return to him later.  Garry knows a lot of IR, but of course he is not an IR scholar in the academic sense of that term.

Who were the other voices speaking up with urgency?  IR voices?  Comments are open and I hope you can guide me to the very best commentators who got this one right.

When I google “who predicted Russia war against Ukraine” I get Mearsheimer, a retired Russian general, and a blind psychic, but no bevy of IR scholars.

You might argue that IR scholarship is not about prediction, just as some macroeconomic theories themselves imply  that recessions cannot be generally predicted.  Still, if IR scholars understand this region reasonably well, many more of them should have been raising red flags, no pun intended.  There is no analog of the efficient markets hypothesis here, so IR work should not be so far from some degree of predictive accuracy.  Not so many scholars (of various kinds) predicted the collapse of the USSR, and I think it is absolutely correct to conclude they did not understand the late 1980s USSR very well.  The same can be said of the earlier Iranian revolution, which also was not widely predicted.

As for further instances of getting it wrong, how about Obama’s famous gaffe in the 2012 debate with Mitt Romney, mocking Romney for his fear of Russia and cold war mentality? While Obama was a President and not an IR scholar, this was toward the end of his first-term and his was a “presidency of expertise” like few others have been.  Obama was not irresponsibly “winging it” with his sarcastic take on Russian danger, rather it was a common point of view, especially among Democrats and Democratic political science experts at that time.

Or consider this more recently:

During Burns’ Senate confirmation hearing in February, he said that, as CIA director, he would have “four crucial and inter-related priorities.” They were: “China, technology, people and partnerships.” Russia was not on that priorities list.

Again, he is not an IR scholar but still:

To be fair, few people in Washington were bothered by that at the time. The city was far more obsessed, on a bipartisan basis, with China and its ambitions.

Overall, on a scale of one to ten, how would we grade the performance of IR scholars on the Russia-Ukraine war?  2?  2.5?

What are some possible reasons for those individuals so consistently missing the boat on this issue?  I see a few options:

1. The IR community is mostly Democrats, and they were unprepared for the narrative that Putin might invade under Biden but not Trump.  They too much had mental models where the evil of Putin works through Trump.

2. Perhaps the IR community doesn’t put enough emphasis on historical continuity and persistence.  Russia has been messing around in Ukraine since at least Catherine the Great during the 18th century.  Since that time, how many of those years has Ukraine been a semi-free, autonomous nation?  Hardly any.

3. The IR community is risk-averse, and preserving of its academic reputations, and thus its members are less willing to make bold predictions than say pundits are.  You might even think that is good, all things considered, but it will help explain the missed predictions here.

4. Perhaps partly for ideological reasons, it is hard for much of the IR community to internalize how much Putin (correctly?) thinks of the Western Europeans as cowards who will not defend themselves.  The Western European nations are supposed to represent reasonable ways of running a polity, committed to social democracy above all else, and that is what so many academics believe as well.  It might be hard for them to see that Western Europe has been full of folly, including with respect to nuclear energy and also collective defense.

5. Amongst academic and many of the scholars outside of academia but on the fringes, thoughts about evil are channeled into domestic directions, such as Trump, guns, “the right wing,” and so on.  Maybe there isn’t enough mental energy to stay sufficiently alert about possible evils elsewhere.  Along related lines, we don’t always have the background in the humanities, and history, to recognize that a certain kind of destructive evil still is possible in today’s world.

What else?

Listing those five points returns my attention to Kasparov, who has been banging the drum about Putin for quite a few years now and telling us Putin is going to do something like this.  Garry is often considered an “extremist” by academics, or “not one of the club,” but it seems to me he has been entirely right and most of them entirely wrong.  I know Garry, and can report that he really is able to pierce the veil on 1-5 very clearly.  Perhaps that helped him see what was coming.  For instance, Garry is strongly anti-Trump, but he doesn’t let that distract him from other issues of relevance.  He also knows Russian history and the humanities very well, and his understanding of evil is well-calibrated to yield good predictions in situations like this.

I’ve also found that many individuals from the Baltic states, with real skin in the game, have had an appropriate level of suspicion about Russia for a long time.  Anecdotally might this broadly Baltic view be more correct than the weaker suspicions held by the IR scholars?

Addendum: I’ve heard a few people claim that Putin is just an irrational madman and that he lies outside the sphere of prediction altogether.  Well, the action in Ukraine had very definite and very direct precursors, including other invasions of Ukraine!  It hardly seems like a pure black swan.  Furthermore, a lot of the Russian public supports or at least tolerates the invasion.  “Putin’s propaganda,” some cry, but all that same machinery of censorship and propaganda was not enough to get the Russian public to trust the Sputnik vaccine, which very likely would have saved many of their lives.  So these events are not just about Putin by any means.

Also, if you are curious as to where I think things stand now, here is a good and interesting thread on the current state of the war and where it might be headed.”

LIVE c Гарри Каспаровым и Алексеем Арестовичем: Влияние войны в Украине на ход мировой истории | Free Russia Forum | May 28, 2022

Гарри Каспаров, Алексей Арестович. Очень важный разговор https://t.co/N8KnhE7je1

— Chess-News.ru Шахматы без цензуры (@Chess__News) May 28, 2022

Former Chess Champion Kasparov Says Russian Opposition Can Only Exist Outside The Country | Radio Free Europe | May 28, 2022

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

By Timofei Rozhanskiy

“VILNIUS — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s heavy-handed crackdown on dissent at home means that effective opposition to his rule can only exist outside the country, activist and former chess champion Garry Kasparov has told Current Time.

Members of the opposition who have stayed in Russia “have no opportunity to express their views,” Kasparov said in an interview on May 23 from Riga, where he participated in a meeting organized by the Free Russia Forum to discuss the consequences of Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

“Political life ended long ago in Russia,” he said.

Over Putin’s more than 22 years as president or prime minister, his government has taken over or shut down nearly all independent media, banned foreign social media platforms, outlawed opposition groups, jailed leading activists, shut civil society organizations, and broadly labeled individuals or entities expressing dissent as foreign agents to discredit them.

Last year, courts sentenced Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s most prominent political opponent, to more than two years in prison for parole violations he denied and outlawed his Anti-Corruption Foundation and other groups after the state labeled them extremist organizations, a designation he and supporters say is absurd.

Kasparov participating in a chess tournament in 2015.

This March, Navalny received a new nine-year prison on charges of embezzlement and contempt. The West and human rights organizations have called the targeting of Navalny and his foundation an attempt by Putin to silence dissent.

Navalny’s closest associates have fled the country over the past year for fear of arrest on trumped up charges.

Putin has intensified his crackdown on dissent since ordering the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, signing bills into law that criminalize independent war reporting and protesting the war.

Kasparov said that political opponents of Putin who continue to operate in Russia within the strict confines set by the president only serve to legitimize his rule.

Kasparov did not name any person or organization in particular but expressed disproval of opposition members running for political office.

“Any work within the framework of the mechanism and apparatus of Putin’s state — the structure that has been built — strengthens the regime. It convinces him of his rightness, adds legitimacy, and thereby makes the regime stronger,” he said.

He said opposition members should leave if they have the opportunity to do so, arguing that they can have no influence over policy at home.

Kasparov, 59, is now seeking to help Russians opposed to Putin’s rule live abroad following sweeping Western sanctions that have made emigration more difficult.

The West has largely cut flights to Russia and ended banking relationships with the country, hindering the ability of Russians to bank abroad.

Kasparov said he is discussing with European officials a way to improve the rights of Russians living abroad if they sign a three-point declaration denouncing the war, calling Putin’s rule illegitimate, and recognizing Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

“With such a signed declaration in hand, in my opinion, it is unfair to deprive a person — just because he has a Russian passport and was born in Russia — of the opportunity to exercise his rights” including participating in international sporting events, obtaining a residence permit, or opening a bank account, he said.

Kasparov said it should be open to people who previously supported Putin, highlighting actress Chulpan Khamatova, who in 2012 recorded a video supporting the authoritarian leader’s return to the presidency.

Khamatova, who is living in Latvia, has taken part in anti-war protests in the Baltic country.

Kasparov dominated the chess world from 1985 to 2000. A vocal critic of Putin since the early 2000s, he faced repression as he tried to build up the non-partisan, pro-democracy group United Civic Front.

In a sign of what was to come a decade later, Kasparov’s protests against Putin’s rule in the 2000s were violently broken up by police and he was questioned by investigators.

SEE ALSO:War In Ukraine Causes Global Food Shortage

He left Russia for self-imposed exile about a decade ago as repression inside Russia quickly grew with Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012.

Russia last week added Kasparov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil tycoon, to its registry of foreign agents following their participation in the Free Russia Forum in Vilnius.

Kasparov told the forum that sanctions against Russia — which also include bans on technology critical for the functioning of the nation’s industry — should remain in place until it compensates Ukraine for war damage and those guilty of war crimes are brought to justice.”

Kasparov Added To Russian ‘Foreign Agents’ List | Chess.com | May 24, 2022

“Russian Justice Ministry” is an oxymoron under Putin. And I was representing my country back when Putin was still spying on his colleagues in East Germany and stealing from the people in St. Petersburg. Being anti-Putin is, and will always be, pro-Russian. https://t.co/u7jkvv4Eun

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) May 20, 2022

This article is a reprint. You can see the original at Chess.com.

By Peter Doggers

“Last Friday, Russia’s Ministry of Justice added GM Garry Kasparov to the list of individuals acting as “foreign agents” for receiving donations or funding from outside Russia and carrying out political activities. For Kasparov, who is living abroad, the decision seems mostly symbolic and even a badge of honor.

A law from 2012, originally designed to constrain independent NGOs in Russia, was expanded several times. Since December 2020, it includes the possibility to label Russian individuals who are engaged in political activity. Starting from April 2022, dozens of Russian journalists, public activists, and scientists have been declared foreign agents and as of last Friday, Kasparov is included as well.

According to the Justice Ministry, Kasparov received funding from Ukraine and the American Human Rights Foundation.

Kasparov reacted on Twitter: “’Russian Justice Ministry’ is an oxymoron under Putin. And I was representing my country back when Putin was still spying on his colleagues in East Germany and stealing from the people in St. Petersburg. Being anti-Putin is, and will always be, pro-Russian.”

Kasparov, who was world chess champion from 1985 to 2000, retired from competitive chess in 2005. He still plays occasional chess events, under the Russian flag, but is mostly active as a political activist and commentator. Having predicted Russian president Vladimir Putin’s aggressive warfare in Ukraine to a large extent in his 2015 book Winter Is Coming, he has been interviewed numerous times by international media since the start of the war.

Last week, Kasparov was a guest at the Grand Chess Tour’s Warsaw Rapid & Blitz tournament. Then he traveled to Lithuania where he met with, among others, GM Viktorij Cmilyte, the speaker of the Lithuanian parliament.

At the moment Kasparov is attending the Oslo Freedom Forum as he does every year as the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation. On Tuesday, he was involved in a panel discussion hosted by Anne Applebaum (staff writer for The Atlantic and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of Eastern Europe) and joined by Paul Massaro (senior policy advisor for the US Helsinki Commission and counter-corruption expert) and Oleksandra Matviichuk (head of the Center for Civil Liberties).”

Putin’s Wars: How to Defend Human Rights in Russia, Ukraine, and Beyond | Oslo Freedom Forum | May 24, 2022

https://t.co/bk4SLgE9rv

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) May 24, 2022

You can watch the original livestream at the Oslo Freedom Forum.