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.
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...
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.
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".
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.
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...
Having said that, I could see it resulting in a small increase of harassment of Russians in other countries.
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.
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)
Not until the government has changed or reparations have been paid.
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?
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.
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.
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.
It's not a team sport. One would think chess players represent themselves.
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.
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.
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.
you are right, this is sending a message, but its a deeply philosophical message.
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.
He said he didn’t use the word “war” to avoid being censored, so that the Russian media can quote him directly.
How much more critical have you been of your own country invading other nations?
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?