Moscow upholds arrest order targeting exiled chess champion

A Moscow court has confirmed the legality of the arrest in absentia of former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, who Russian authorities classify as an “extremist and terrorist.”

According to court documents cited by Russian media, the Moscow City Court upheld an earlier decision ordering Kasparov’s arrest on charges of publicly inciting terrorism. The ruling concerns a case opened under Part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Russian Criminal Code, which criminalises public calls for terrorism, its justification, or related propaganda. Kasparov has also been designated a “foreign agent” by Russia’s Ministry of Justice.

The arrest in absentia was initially ordered on December 23, 2025, by Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court. Earlier, on February 17, Kasparov acknowledged transferring $15 million to Ukraine, with the funds reportedly routed through an organisation he founded in the United States.

Kasparov, a Soviet- and Russian-born chess player and the 13th World Chess Champion, is an Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR and an eight-time Chess Olympiad winner. He retired from professional chess in 2005. In 2012, he was elected to the Coordination Council of the Russian opposition, after which he announced his departure from Russia and continued political activities abroad.

Following the launch of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine in February 2022, Kasparov became one of the organisers of the Free Russia Forum and the Russian Action Committee, and later joined the Anti-War Committee of Russia, which was subsequently designated an undesirable organisation by the Prosecutor General’s Office. In 2024, his name was added to Rosfinmonitoring’s registry of extremists and terrorists.

In October 2025, Russia’s Federal Security Service reported that criminal cases had been opened against Kasparov and other committee members, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Investigators cited charges under Articles 278, Part 1 of Article 205.4, and Part 2 of Article 205.4 of the Criminal Code, related to alleged violent seizure of power, organisation of a terrorist community, and participation in such a community.

This is not the first such decision against Kasparov. In 2024, a court in Russia’s Komi Republic also ordered his arrest in absentia in a separate case involving the former chess champion.

By Tamilla Hasanova