It has been a good week for Russian soft power in the sporting world.

On Tuesday (22 September) in Brussels, the EU lifted a visa-ban on a portly 73-year-old Russian billionaire, Alisher Usmanov, who is head of the International Fencing Federation.

And on Saturday in Samarkand, FIDE, the world chess body, elected a Kazakh billionaire, Timur Turlov, who has no professional chess rating, but who does have strong links to Russia, to be its next president.

On paper, Turlov ended 30 years of Russian rule at FIDE, but at a closer look, his victory seems like its continuation under a false flag.

The 38-year-old financier was born in Moscow and made his fortune there, but left Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, renounced his Russian citizenship, and divested most of his Russian holdings, giving him a nice alibi against Western sanctions.

But he has still been blacklisted by Ukraine for ongoing business ties to Russia’s oil and gas sectors.

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

Ever been called 'far Right' for wanting low taxes, free speech and controlled immigration? You're in good company: JFK wanted much the same. The label is ludicrous – and the elites know it, says Dr James Allan.

The post If I’m Far Right, then so Was John F. Kennedy appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Suppressing debate about English ethnicity, and labelling those who claim to be ethnically English 'fascists', doesn’t prevent resentment – it fuels it. Konstantin Kisin is right and Rishi Sunak is wrong.

The post The Quickest Way to Fuel an English Ethnonationalist Movement is to Deny that English Ethnicity Exists appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.