GENEVA: Freedom in Russia and the end of President Vladimir Putin\u2019s rule depends on Ukraine winning the war, Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov said Tuesday as Moscow and Washington held talks.
\nAs US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks in Saudi Arabia, former chess world champion Kasparov said any outcome that Putin could present as a victory would only extend his grip on power.
\n\u201cThere is no freedom of Russia, no end of the Putin regime, without Ukrainian victory,\u201d the chess grandmaster told a press conference after addressing the annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy conference.
\n\u201cEven a partial victory; inflicting defeat on Putin will lead to a change in Russia.
\n\u201cIf Putin wins, or presents the outcome as victory,\u201d which could involve \u201ckeeping territories and lifting sanctions… he\u2019ll stay there. A dictator is never in danger if he is still on the rise.\u201d
\nKasparov, 61, retired from chess in 2005 to focus on political activism and has lived in exile in New York for the past decade. The longtime Putin opponent was added to Russia\u2019s list of \u201cextremists\u201d in March 2024.
\nKasparov spoke as many in Europe fear that US President Donald Trump\u2019s overhaul of US policy on Russia will upend Europe\u2019s decades-long security structure.
\nKasparov said Trump did \u201cabsolutely not\u201d understand the complexity of the conflict, and those around him were too scared to tell him that his geopolitical knowledge was insufficient.
\nHe expected Trump would have to make \u201cmassive concessions\u201d to secure his objective of ending the war.
\nKasparov said Rubio was \u201cnot an idiot \u2014 he\u2019s spineless, but he still has brains,\u201d and therefore understands that he can\u2019t deliver \u201cunless they have to give up everything to Putin.\u201d
\nHe said Putin was pretending he was in a strong position but the Russian economy \u201cwill probably collapse within the next 12 to 18 months.\u201d
\nMeanwhile Ukraine could keep fighting if Europe provided the money to buy US weaponry \u2014 and \u201cas long as money is being paid, I don\u2019t think he (Trump) cares.\u201d
\n\u201cIf Trump wants to end the war, it\u2019s not difficult: just cut Russian oil exports,\u201d Kasparov added.
\nThe chess great said the West had sorely lacked a collective strategy since Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
\nMeanwhile \u201cPutin has a very simple idea: stay in power. That\u2019s it. There\u2019s no other idea,\u201d said Kasparov.
\n\u201cThe cause of the war is Putin and his imperial ambitions that will never disappear, because there\u2019s nothing else that can justify him staying in power for life.\u201d
\nKasparov said Russia\u2019s biggest problem was not what happens in Putin\u2019s inner circle but that many average citizens still \u201clive in imperial dreams.\u201d
\n\u201cThe Russian empire must go, and the future of Russia may not be in the current borders of Russia. The way I see the future, Russia must return all the occupied territories \u2014 Crimea included.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GENEVA: Freedom in Russia and the end of President Vladimir Putin\u2019s rule depends on Ukraine winning the war, Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov said Tuesday as Moscow and Washington held talks. As US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks in Saudi Arabia, former chess world champion Kasparov said any …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77293,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77278\/revisions\/77293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}