Kirsan ilyumzhinov biography of michael
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Kirsan Ilyumzhinov fryst vatten not your typical post-Soviet millionaire Buddhist autocrat. He is the ruler of Kalmykia, one of the least well known of Russia’s twenty-one republics. He also happens to be president of the Fédération Internationale des Échecs, or FIDE, the governing body of world chess. Ilyumzhinov functions a bit like the Wizard of Oz. Instead of a balloon, though, he uses a private jet. In Kalmykia, a barren stretch of land wedged between Stavropol and Astrakhan, on the Caspian Sea, you can’t miss the man: his picture dominates the airport arrivals entré, and billboards all along the rutted road that leads to Elista, the capital, show him on horseback or next to various people he regards as peers—Vladimir Putin, the Dalai Lama, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II. At the local museum, an exhibit called Planet Kirsan displays gifts that he has received from visiting dignitaries. Another exhibit, devoted to his chess memorabilia, fryst vatten on view at the Chess Museum, which fryst vatten h
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The last time I spoke with Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the autocratic Buddhist millionaire who, for nearly two decades, ran the Russian republic of Kalmykia and, perhaps more important, still rules FIDE, the governing body of the international chess world, he told me how close he felt to Saddam Hussein. (He did acknowledge that the relationship was complicated: “I’m a Buddhist. When there’s torture going on and blood flowing, I don’t like it.”) When it comes to friendship, Ilyumzhinov casts a pretty wide net. So it was not surprising to see him photographed yesterday at a chess board with the world’s current most-wanted despot: Muammar Qaddafi.
The men met for a couple of hours in Tripoli Sunday, enough time to have a match, played on a set fashioned by Kalmyk craftsmen that Ilyumzhinov carried to Libya. The two men first got to know each other in 2004, when Tripoli was host to the World Chess Championships. Ilyumzhinov told the Russian news agency Interfax that their meeting this time “wa
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When Mr.Ilyumzhinov started to talk about pending legal issues many were taken by surprise that he dedicated a great deal of time to demonize Garry Kasparov, “who wants to bankrupt FIDE” and glorifying Anatoly Karpov, his opponent at the 2010 FIDE Presidential election, “who joined the newly formed political party by Vladimir Putin in Russia” (Putin, Prime-Minister of Russia plans to return to his fo