Russia is a mafia state today, and Putin is its top godfather.

Botvinnik tried to take the mystery out of Chess, always relating it to situations in ordinary life. He used to call chess a typical inexact problem similar to those which people are always having to solve in everyday life.

I want to serve chess through games, books that are works of art. I would like to bring the game closer to many people all over the world.

The only game [Vladimir] Putin can play is to establish a lifelong dictatorship in the country, at first de facto and finally also de jure. In this case, [Dmitri] Medvedev is an interim figure bound to assist Putin in his plan to guarantee a smooth transition to a new term in office.

[Vladimir] Putin is more of a poker player. In poker, unlike chess, you can effectively compensate for a very weak hand by bluffing. There are fixed rules in chess, and no one knows how the game will end. Things are currently the other way around in Putin's realm. But it won't stay that way forever.

But we must not forget the effort undertaken by the ruling elite in Russia to manipulate Western politicians, businessmen as well as journalists. That's why [Vladimir] Putin's "fifth column" is that powerful in the West.

Once I spoke about this subject among a group of English intellectuals. One of them was a professor on Roman Law at one of the leading British universities. I asked him,what was the official language of the Byzantine Empire? He said, maybe sometime in the sixth or the seventh century.The Justinian Codex, the rule of law in the Byzantine Empire which was produced by Emperor Justinian, it was written in Latin.And he looked at me ,he knew that I knew already that the only original copy was found in the beginning of the sixteenth century.