If that were actually the issue they’d be allowed to play, but not on behalf of Russia.

Though I’m curious - how much time in your opinion has to pass before Russians are allowed to participate again? If actions have to be taken, which ones?

If actions can be taken to allow them to participate then in a sense is that saying the actions are sufficient to compensate for the senseless killing of Ukrainians? If no time or actions can be taken then are we ok with indefinitely ostracizing a group of people? What of their children?

Earth has already been down that road, it’s not really great. Best to just punish those who directly contributed to the things with disagree with.

> Though I’m curious - how much time in your opinion has to pass before Russians are allowed to participate again?

I think the idea in this case is that since many Ukranians can't play, Russians shouldn't be able to either. So I would think the sanctions would end when Ukraine isn't fighting anymore, and can participate again. That's at least the IOC's stance. [0]

[0] https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-eb-recommends-no-participa...

But no Ukrainian was banned from playing? Were any even invited?

You're right! The only fair solution is to drop Grischuk in central Kyiv; if he survives the journey to Norway and arrives on time, he should be allowed to play.

Not every Ukrainian is located in Kyiv. There are Ukrainians living abroad, that have left Ukraine, and have the ability to leave Ukraine.

Why is the standard an imaginary Ukrainian grandmaster currently trapped or engaged in fighting?

Perhaps they should cancel it for everyone because this imaginary person can't make it. After all it is also unfair that people can travel from Germany and the US while the imaginary Ukrainian can't.

> Though I’m curious - how much time in your opinion has to pass before Russians are allowed to participate again?

How is that relevant? I think no matter what the answer, no one is going to draw the line sooner than "during the actual invasion".

>no one is going to draw the line sooner than "during the actual invasion".

If it's going to just be countries still in ongoing war or occupation, then I suppose China, India, Turkey, France, Israel, and the US will be next on the list to be uninvited from the tournament. I'm sure we could think of more too.

Funny you should mention Israel.

People playing under the Iranian flag aren't allowed to play people under the Israeli flag. Because they represent Iran, and the player under the Israeli flag represents Israel.

Not only is this not a new issue, it's an issue where lines are already drawn. This is just a tournament choosing sides where the previous instance that I'm aware of was an entire chess federation...

Chess isn't something that's played "on behalf of" countries like the Olympics are, are they, or some gray area in between? Aside from that, I kind of view it as a blunt instrument. If there were a way to target Putin and his regime directly within a reasonable amount of risk, I think they'd have chosen that option. In 2014 I think I remember some people under Putin took it as a badge of honor to be on the sanctions list, it seemed like an inconvenience that could be solved by more corruption to work around it. I think if you make it policy to try to isolate a country, but start allowing exceptions, then it's not going to be ordinary Russians that benefit, but instead only connected people and the whole thing loses its bite. And it's a response to a specific action by a specific regime. I don't see why these bans wouldn't be lifted once sanctions are lifted.

Having said that, I could see it resulting in a small increase of harassment of Russians in other countries.

> Chess isn't something that's played "on behalf of" countries like the Olympics are, are they, or some gray area in between?

Most events, and the general culture, is in a grey area. Outside of the Olympiad which features literal national teams, flags still feature prominently. There's of course wild variance in how nationalistic players feel; some like Karjakin are deeply nationalistic while the average probably feels loosely tied. Some even change associations after conflicts with their country of origin, see young prodigy Firouzja moving from Iran to France recently. I can't think of a comparable international sport to compare it to since I mostly know about American sports. Somebody else that follows chess and i.e. football may be able to make that comparison - AFAIK most players play for national teams during nationalized events but don't wear their country's flag prominently when they play for private clubs.

Each country has its own federation and playing for one's federation is so deeply ingrained in the culture that the solution "well, just play as yourself, not a national" that seems obvious outsiders is something that organizers and players are hesitant to reach for. I think *a* reason for this is that dipping out of a federation prevents you from playing in that country's championship or representing them in the Olympiad, each of which are a big deal to the top players. There are also almost surely other complications in FIDE rules that I'm not aware of. Suffice it to say that playing under the FIDE or ROC flags is not the sort of thing you'd see until recently.

> Chess isn't something that's played "on behalf of" countries like the Olympics are, are they

Mostly not, but there’s the Chess Olympiad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_Olympiad) and the World Team Championship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Team_Chess_Championship)

> Though I’m curious - how much time in your opinion has to pass before Russians are allowed to participate again? If actions have to be taken, which ones?

Not until the government has changed or reparations have been paid.

The is position that a person with Russian citizen cannot represent themselves and will always be representing the country is bankrupt.

Invitations are based on personal performance, not allocated based on national identity like the Olympics.

Should us companies fire workers with Russian citizenship or ties?

They don't have to represent Russia, the organisers could let them play without the Russian flag next to the players name.

To add to this, it seems like chess players semi-frequently change what flag they play under, and can play under no flag at all.

Alireza Firouzja (world #2) for instance originally played under the Iranian flag, played under no flag for a year and a half, and now plays under the French flag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alireza_Firouzja

Firouzja is now French. He did the right thing. Alexander Grishuk should be able too, i'm pretty sure the Ukrainian government would be thrilled to give him a passport, even for free and without the usual administrative red tape.

Everyone still thinks of them as representing Russia though, especially if you just let them be called "Russian Olympic Committee" or similar.

Even if they were under a neutral flag everyone would think of the person as Russian.

There's no way around it, we all already know where they are from, regardless of what they think of the war.

> Even if they were under a neutral flag everyone would think of the person as Russian.

Yeah because they're from Russia. I just don't see how "people will think" is enough of a reason to ban them from playing an event.

(1) Some deranged person running Russia decided to invade Ukraine, kill innocent people and ruin millions of lives.

(2) A chess organization in Norway bans a player because they were born in the same country as the deranged person from above.

I don't get how (2) is an appropriate response to (1) or how it helps anyone. It's not a deterrent, it's not any kind of response - nobody in the Russian government will feel the tiniest bit of pressure because of it, it's such a token act that it's laughable to think about in the context of what's happening in Ukraine. At the same time it's a big deal to the handful of players it affects.

All this does is create publicity and make the careers of a few people significantly worse just because they happened to be born in the wrong country.

I wonder if this will also push some people closer to Russia and Putin -- if they're not welcome in Europe, then, what's left for them?

>Everyone still thinks of them as representing Russia though

not really, in chess at least. Playing under the FIDE flag is pretty common when geopolitical tensions are involved, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_flag_player

Israeli players playing under the FIDE flag at UAE tournaments has happened as well. There's plenty of precedent for it.

> Everyone still thinks of them as representing Russia though, especially if you just let them be called "Russian Olympic Committee" or similar.

Citation needed. If I see someone playing chess, or any game for that matter, then I assume they represent the flag that they're playing under is what the represent. If I see someone playing under a non-Russian flag, it doesn't matter how Russian their name sounds - I don't consider them to be representing Russia in any capacity - they could have been born in India, a French citizen, ethnically Ethiopian, and just given that name by their parents, for all I know.

(and, if I look into them further, and discover that they're a Russian citizen and they're intentionally not playing under a Russian flag, there's no way I'll think that they're representing Russia)

Please find me examples of people who do not believe this, because the idea that "Everyone still thinks of them as representing Russia though" is both deeply weird and completely illogical to me, and I've never met someone who agrees with it.

You gotta be kidding me. The winter Olympics just ended. Who did you think Valieva was skating for? Herself? There's a huge team behind each competitor and they're based around nations. What about the ice hockey team? Bunch of neutrals who happened to have a history of playing together, having grown up in Russia, and got to the final? Totally disingenuous to not call them the Russian team, and nobody thought otherwise either. At some point you have to common sense and admit the whole neutral flag thing is just a convenient way for the IOC to avoid some tough decisions.

To me, chess is primarily an individual game, and I was mildly surprised that so many here think about it as a country thing. Magnus Carlsen the individual, not Norway, is best in the world. Norway is just one mildly interesting data point about him. In my mind.

In the Olympics -- yes then I understand, then it's one player per country. So disallow, then. But there's so many other chess competitions.

Comparing with ice hockey doesn't make sense to me.

As I recall, this is what happened to Nepo during the recent World Chess Championship anyway due to the doping scandal.

> the person is representing Russia

It's not a team sport. One would think chess players represent themselves.

Most sports are not team sports, yet sportsmen represent their countries.

No, that is only true in an event such as the Olympics where the team is officially sanctioned and determined by their country. A random individual does not represent their country whether they are playing a sport, working a job, or doing anything else - they represent themselves.

What is the purpose of the ban? Is it really doing anything to undermine Russia’s leadership? My guess is that this harms chess players who happen to be Russian but who have no control over the government and doesn’t do anything to hinder the actual Russian government in any meaningful way.

Yeah as an Iranian, I have experience with these sort of decisions and they are discriminatory and an excuse for xenophobia. I never chose where I was born. I left the second I could. Holding me to my birthplace is just as fucked as having a "no Browns allowed" sign.

The purpose of the ban is to weaken and undermine the Putin regime. Of course it is unfortunate for the players not getting to play a chess match, but if this ban (along with all the other economic and cultural sanctions) shorten the war by just a day, surely that sacrifice would be well worth it.

Perhaps I’m missing something but I really don’t see _how_ banning chess players shortens a war that those same chess players have no control over.

There is no way to hit Putin and his war chest directly. The intent of the sanctions is to indirectly weaken him and his power structure and undermine his public support. The cultural sanctions are certainly the mildest, the economic sanctions are going to hit the average Russian a lot harder. All of the sanctions work together to send a clear message.

Will it work? We don't know. Sanctions does not have a good track record of being effective, but on the other hand such a massive package of sanctions have been tried before.

Of course the effect of any single sanction seem negligible. Does it stop the war to cancel a chess match? Of course not. Does it stop the war to seize some billionaires Yacht? Probably not. But the combined force of all the sanctions hopefully have an effect.

Some say that popular support does not matter because Putin is a dictator. However Putin himself clearly believe popular support is important, otherwise why the need for the massive propaganda and silencing dissenting voices?

When taking about the fairness of the sanctions, realize that a "fair and proportional response" according to international law would be to literally bomb and shell Russians cities.

> weaken him and his power structure and undermine his public support

A problem is, these things can also make him stronger? And increase pubic support.

If people start getting "bullied" because they happened to be born in Russia, then maybe some of them will start disliking Europe, and think "Putin not so bad after all".

What if you threw stones through someone's window, because they were born in Russia? Do you think that makes Putin weaker or stronger

Not saying I know what to do, or that I have the answers.

Putin only got stronger and bolder after the mild and ineffectual international response to the annexation of Crimea. So you are basally saying, if the West does nothing, Putin gets stronger, if the West strike back against Russia, Putin also gets stronger. So what do you suggest could possibly work?

Most sanctions make sense to me.

If I say, "this animal looks cute but it might bite", then, I'm not saying that all animals will bite you.

One sanction seems maybe-bad. But I'm not saying all sanctions are bad. On the contrary, most are good I think, eg SWIFT.

I want more sanctions: stop the gas.

What’s the difference between what Russia is doing and America’s illegal invasion of Iraq. Why weren’t American athletes banned?

Russians have been carpet bombing innocent Syrians for years. Even using thermobarbic bombs against them, with no sanctioning from the West. Obviously the middle east is of little consequence in these discussions for all parties.

You’re not wrong there. The BBC interviewed a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine, who told the network: “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair … being killed every day.” Rather than question or challenge the comment, the BBC host flatly replied, “I understand and respect the emotion.”

In one of the "Russian Roulette" episode when the Ukrainian army circle and bomb some city in Dombas, the journalist notice a swastika pendant on one of the soldier and ask if he is not afraid of being misrepresented as a fascist, before moving on. Double standards at its best.

ritht,n and do people really think governments should be independent of their citizenship?

you are right, this is sending a message, but its a deeply philosophical message.

Iran does the same thing with Israeli chess players which it considers an apartheid occupation of Palestine. I would love to hear your views on it.

This is how you step on a path of a genocide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide)

Genocide and ethnic cleansing is already in full swing. Too late for "step on a path".

As a Russian immigrant in US, i support kicking out from US or any other country any Russian who wouldn't condemn in straight clear words Putin's fascist regime and the genocide it conducts in Ukraine. Anything less is just a support of what is going on.

For any public figure it is doubly so. Grischuk didn't even use the word "war" in order to not have issues with Russian government. Well, it is a war and one can't be on good terms with all the sides simultaneously, and there is no neutrality when it comes to genocide and ethnic cleansing. Ukrainian civilians get killed being intentionally bombed in their homes just for being Ukrainians (it is called genocide), Ukrainian women and children are running for their lives to Poland (as their lives are in danger just for them being Ukrainians, and such ethnicity based forced displacement constitutes ethnic cleansing), with some walking tens of kilometers in cold winter, and even some women giving birth in-route. If you don't take their side then you really should be kicked out of the civilized world.

This comment makes me think of a piece of relevant literature who’s television adaption is about to end called Shingeki no Kyojin or it’s English translation “Attack on Titan”. I wonder what the reaction of the upcoming episodes will be as the Russian Invasion continues.

> Grischuk didn't even use the word "war" in order to not have issues with Russian government.

He said he didn’t use the word “war” to avoid being censored, so that the Russian media can quote him directly.

That is BS. Government coming upon you for the "war" is exactly a statement one has to make in such situation if one is really against that war. Especially that the government just can't chase everybody uttering the word, and there are a lot of such people.

Allowing a dictator to invade a neighboring country which he don't think had a right to exist, is how you end up with genocide.

Are you claiming Alexander Grischuk allowed Russia to invade Ukraine? (something he's been openly critical of?)

How much more critical have you been of your own country invading other nations?

> Are you claiming Alexander Grischuk allowed Russia to invade Ukraine?

The purpose of the cultural sanctions is not to punish the individual sportsmen or artist or change their opinions, the purpose is to undermine the popular support for the war and the Putin-regime.

The Putin regime have used sports as a point of national pride in order to strengthen popular support. So it stands to reason that excluding Russia from sports would weaken the regime in some degree.

Apparently many Russians are not even aware they are involved in a war due to the massive propaganda and censorship. Maybe Russia getting excluded from all sports event might at least get them to ask some questions about what is going on?