Frankly I'm getting tired of all the psyops flood. This helps nil because they're only inconveniencing Alexander, not the Russian government, their military or their oligarchy. Of all the sports, I would have thought chess would be much less prone to politics because chess players are almost free agents.
This is absolutely untrue. Russian chess has always been used by the Russian state as a propaganda vehicle, similarly to Olympic sports. And the chess players are hardly free agents as long as they or their families are based in Russia.
Many people think that, in the time of the USSR, Russian chess players conspired to make sure a Soviet player won tournaments.
For example, they would try harder to beat strong non-Soviet players than to beat strong Soviet players, would throw away games to give a Soviet player more points, would offer a draw very soon to give a Soviet player time to rest/prepare for theirnext matig, etc.
