Tweet
Ukrainian Grandmaster Kateryna Lagno has left the Ukrainian team in favor of the Russian team. GM Lagno, 24, won two European chess championships and is the 2014 Women's World Champion in fast chess. She is currently ranked ... as the seventh-best female chess player in the world.
Having grown up in chess-friendly Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, she could very well have friends who were bombed by the junta in Kiev. Given the brutality of that regime, with their war crimes and ethnic cleansing of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, I can't say as I'm surprised that she would choose to move. Mind you, her public remarks were, wisely, diplomatically expressed.
Kateryna follows Super-GM Sergey Karjakin who also recently made the jump to the Russian team. For all we know, more may follow and the trickle will become a flood ... just like the flood of tens of thousands (up to 110,000 so far and may reach as high as 490,000!) of Ukrainian refugees into Russia.
The cost for the Russian Federation is 20,000-euros ($27,215). Maybe you could call it neo-liberal privatization at work. The Ukrainian Chess Federation gets cash, which they may need badly under the cruel IMF-sponsored austerity regime, and Russia gets a brilliantly talented player in Kateryna.
FIDE card Kateryna Lagno
Ukrainian Chess Champion joins Russian team.
Having grown up in chess-friendly Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, she could very well have friends who were bombed by the junta in Kiev. Given the brutality of that regime, with their war crimes and ethnic cleansing of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, I can't say as I'm surprised that she would choose to move. Mind you, her public remarks were, wisely, diplomatically expressed.
Kateryna follows Super-GM Sergey Karjakin who also recently made the jump to the Russian team. For all we know, more may follow and the trickle will become a flood ... just like the flood of tens of thousands (up to 110,000 so far and may reach as high as 490,000!) of Ukrainian refugees into Russia.
The cost for the Russian Federation is 20,000-euros ($27,215). Maybe you could call it neo-liberal privatization at work. The Ukrainian Chess Federation gets cash, which they may need badly under the cruel IMF-sponsored austerity regime, and Russia gets a brilliantly talented player in Kateryna.
FIDE card Kateryna Lagno
Ukrainian Chess Champion joins Russian team.
Attached Files