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.
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.
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.
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.
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.