Former chess world champion and Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov sees sports organizations and officials like IOC President Thomas Bach as willing vicarious agents of Vladimir Putin. World sport has Putin “encouraged and pushed further along the path of aggression”, Kasparov said in the ARD interview. In view of the Russian attack on Ukraine, one must ask oneself how to deal with sports associations that “to tools of dictators” had become.
Proximity to Putin for convenience
Sports organizations would have sought closeness to Putin primarily for economic reasons and convenience. “I’m not a fan of Mr. Bach or other officials of the IOC or FIFA because they all have direct or indirect connections with the Putins of the world.” It is much easier to negotiate with dictators than to apply for grants in the German Bundestag or the British Parliament, Kasparov said: “One dinner might be enough to get money from Putin.”
Due to the unified response of the West to the war of aggression, which Putin, according to Kasparov “completely underestimated” have, be the Russian President’s network in the free world “as good as ruined”, said the 58-year-old. Now be it “Very important to make sure something like this never happens again. Putin has shown us how to use international events and sports organizations to promote his agenda”said Kasparov: “It cannot be that we depend on such tragic events as in Ukraine to wake up.”