Ian Nepomniachtchi’s top 20 exit shows Russian chess is down, but it’s not checkmated yet | Chess News

Garry Kasparov, who has a declare on being recognised as one of many biggest chess gamers in historical past, as soon as defined how the Soviet Union was in a position to churn out the world’s finest gamers in a row.

“Within the Soviet Union, chess was handled by the authorities as a vital and helpful ideological software to exhibit the mental superiority of the Soviet communist regime over the decadent West,” Kasparov stated on the ‘Conversations with Invoice Crystal’ present in 2016. “We had hundreds of thousands of children going by means of these networks within the nation the place there have been only a few choices accessible for proficient youngsters — enterprise was not an choice, politics was not an choice, the regulation was not an choice, and each dad or mum tried to search for some alternatives for his or her youngsters, and chess was one in every of them. Music, ballet, some form of science, sports activities on the whole, in order that’s why Soviet authorities may channel this big mass of doubtless proficient youngsters into this chess community.”

Nepo, a two-time world championship contender, exited the ranks of the world’s prime 20 chess gamers within the FIDE scores listing revealed within the ultimate month of 2025. (Image Credit score: Michal Walusza/FIDE)

That chess community is working on fumes nowadays as different chess empires emerge in nations like China, USA, India and Uzbekistan.

The indicators of Russia’s fading imprint on the worldwide chessboard had been seen for some time. In July final 12 months, for the primary time in FIDE scores historical past, no Russian discovered a spot within the prime 10 after Nepo slipped out. The 2024 World Chess Championship in Singapore was a duel between a Chinese language grandmaster and an Indian teenager. World championships have been as soon as all-Soviet affairs. However over the previous decade and half, the period of Magnus Carlsen and the age of Indian prodigies has coincided with Russians discovering themselves on the periphery — a notion that may be unattainable to think about just a few many years in the past when the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, however the chess czars formed by the regime have been nonetheless soldiering on.

“Russia just isn’t the Soviet Union. It’s a fraction (of what the Soviet Union was),” five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, who spent the prime of his profession battling Karpov, Kasparov and Kramnik, had stated in an Specific Adda interview in 2024 when requested concerning the causes behind Russian chess’ shrinking affect. “After all, computer systems additionally got here alongside and made all of the coaching benefits that the Soviets had constructed up form of irrelevant very quick. When the nation broke down, loads of Soviet chess gamers immigrated to different international locations and began teaching there, so that they handed it on.”

It should, nonetheless, be famous that Russian chess may be down on the canvas, but it surely’s most positively not out chilly.

Regardless of the 35-year-old Nepo not being anyplace near sneaking into this 12 months’s Candidates (an occasion that will likely be held to handpick a challenger to Gukesh on the subsequent world championship), there will likely be some Russian illustration within the type of Andrey Esipenko, who has an outdoor likelihood of profitable. The ladies’s Candidates event, which will likely be held similtaneously the Open occasion in Cyprus, could have two Russians within the eight-player combine, Kateryna Lagno and Aleksandra Goryachkina.

Lagno and Goryachkina had additionally mixed forces in November to assist the Russian group, taking part in underneath the FIDE flag, win the 2025 Ladies’s World Staff Chess Championships in Linares. This 12 months, the Russian groups appear poised to make a comeback to taking part in underneath the nationwide flag and different nationwide insignia, three years after FIDE banned Russian symbols from competitions as a result of invasion of Ukraine.

And whereas there are not any Russian grandmasters within the prime 20 within the open part, the ladies’s scores listing has three Russians within the prime 10, with Polina Shuvalova becoming a member of Lagno and Goryachkina. The juniors sections too have Russians within the prime 10 with Anna Shukhman (second on this planet amongst ladies), Volodar Murzin (third on this planet amongst boys) and Aleksey Grebnev (world no 8 in juniors) being the gamers that the nation can hope to hold on its legacy within the sport.

On the recently-concluded FIDE World Speedy and Blitz Championship, Goryachkina additionally gained the Ladies’s World Speedy title whereas within the open part Russian grandmaster Vladislav Artemiev took silver on the World Speedy occasion.

Russian chess may be a shadow of itself. However the once-mighty empire just isn’t checkmated but.