Vladimir Putin is the wealthiest man on the planet, for sure. But this is different to the wealth of a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffett, a Carlos Slim or a Sergey Brin. They stay wealthy whether it is Barack Obama or Donald Trump in power. Putin's wealth depends on him staying in power. It is all about controlling the budget, the hard currency reserves and keeping under his thumb the oligarchs who cannot move their money without his permission. It is something close to a trillion dollars that he can control and move.
Garry KasparovChess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.
Garry KasparovI say we should praise Donald Trump for existing and for winning, because it has woken people up. For many years, I have been trying to say to Europeans, and especially to Americans, that Vladimir Putin is a problem for the world. And they have swatted me away. "It's your problem, we have our democracy." Suddenly, because of Trump, they are learning about separation of powers, independence of the judiciary and that Ronald Reagan was right when he said, ยซFreedom is never more than one generation away from extinctionยป.
Garry KasparovPeople's minds are polluted by these dark pictures of the future from Hollywood: "The Terminator," the Skynet, "The Matrix." It's world where there's no room for humans, or they have to fight against the machines. I think it's just a way, way, way, way in the future. Is it going to happen? I don't know. For me, these debates are not similar, but they resemble debates about how the sun will turn into a supernova in 4 to 5 billion years. Frankly, I don't care.
Garry KasparovRosneft, for instance, was mainly built upon capital stolen from [jailed oligarch Mikhail] Khodorkovsky's company, but the IPO was successful with many Western corporations investing in it. This means that it is extremely difficult to detect these assets in their pure form.
Garry Kasparov