"Mind your own business": the world's best chess player drove the world champion from Russia to hysteria

Russian chess player Valentina Gunina was outraged by the words of 16th world champion Magnus Carlsen, who opposed the return of the Russian national team to international tournaments with the national flag. The 35-year-old from Murmansk demanded that the Norwegian grandmaster "mind his own business."

Gunina said this in a commentary to the propaganda publication Sovetsky Sport. The two-time world blitz champion repeated traditional Kremlin narratives about sports outside politics and also called Carlsen's second Peter Heine Nielsen a Russophobe.

"You're not a politician. As they say, mind your own business if you don't know much about it and don't deal with these issues. Many of my friends are disappointed by his statement. It's clear that Magnus has been a leader in chess for a long time. Genius and all that. There's a personal element here. Carlsen's second-in-command, Peter Heine Nielsen, is considered the main Russophobe. I hope that our national team will be allowed to participate in international competitions in the near future. Everything will return to normal. Athletes should not depend on any political influences," Gunina said.

Earlier this week, it became known that the Russians were reinstated in FIDE, despite the fact that the Russian Chess Federation included national committees from the occupied territories of Ukraine. The aggressors' expulsion from FIDE was replaced by a fine of $45,000.

As OBOZ.UA previously reported, the 2001 world chess champion Ruslan Ponomaryov criticized the FIDE leadership, accusing it of defending the interests of Russians.

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