If we look to the south, to Iran, which cannot be "accused" of excess democratic zeal - it goes without saying that the unstable situation does not prepare the ground for a democratic development.

Like Dvoretsky, I think that (all other things being equal), the analytical method of studying chess must give you a colossal advantage over the chess pragmatist, and that there can be no certainty in chess without analysis. I personally acquired these views from my sessions with Mikhail Botvinnik, and they laid the foundations of my chess-playing life.

I learned that fighting on the chess board could also have an impact on the political climate in the country.

I'm not paranoid, but I am cautious. I don't drink tea with strangers, I don't fly Aeroflot and I avoid certain countries with close ties to Russia.

With this mistake I deprived myself of the possibility to make a contribution to the treasury of chess art.

So many dictators trying to blackmail the free world because they have no way to compete on ideas, innovation or creativity. The Cold War was two competing visions of the future. I was always anti-communist but it was an idea at least, an alternative idea. We do not have a competing vision for the future because the ideals of these dictators are in the past. They are time travellers. They need confrontation and destruction to survive. The problem is, many people in the free world are sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.

In chess the rules are fixed and the outcome is unpredictable, whereas in Putin's Russia the rules are unpredictable and the outcome is fixed.