With each success the ability to change is reduced. My longtime friend and coach Grandmaster Yuri Dokhoian, aptly compared it to being dipped in bronze. Each victory added another coat.

The West can't come up with anything to deal with Moscow, except appeasement.

I would like to travel to my country again, to a country without a dictatorship, to a post-Putin Russia.

We are living in a world where major states and large geopolitical projects have to prove their competitive edge. It is clear, as well, that with regard to the intensifying American-Chinese confrontation and the inert power of a united Europe, Russia has to make up its mind - because it is losing ground as an independent center of power.

Remember that the machine is there to help you, because at the end of the day, you're not playing freestyle chess, advanced chess, human-plus-machine. If you are playing against other humans, it's about winning the game. The machine will not be assisting you, unless you are cheating of course. And since the machine is not there, you have to make sure that everything you learn from the computer will not badly affect the way you play the real game.

I don't think that nature envisaged an insurmountable mechanism that would hinder any country from taking the path of democratic development.

I certainly want to be involved in politics and help shape the transition. I am in contact with regime critics who had to leave for the West. One of them is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former businessman, who had to endure 10 years in a prison camp.