More than a month has passed since a new president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) was elected, yet one of the losing candidates, German businessman Wadim Rosenstein, is still not ready to concede defeat. In a new interview, he called the election one of the dirtiest in the organisation’s history. However, Rosenstein’s own campaign left plenty of questions — from his absence at key events to the lack of transparency around his Russian business assets. And the line he has taken since the presidential election has reminded some observers of a player who lost a game and then took offence at his opponent.
How Wadim Rosenstein is connected to chess
On 30 October, Wadim Rosenstein gave a comment to RBC-Ukraine in which he called it a disgrace that the International Chess Federation is run by people who supposedly cannot play chess. The statement is remarkable, especially if one looks at his biography: he has never been a professional chess player, and in a 2023 interview with ChessBase India he described himself as a “passionate amateur.”
Rosenstein began investing actively in professional chess relatively recently — in 2022, when he founded WR Chess. The company started organising international tournaments, supporting professional teams and attracting well-known players.
Meanwhile, the candidate who won the election has headed a national chess federation for almost four years, was one of the initiators of the International School Chess Federation, and plays chess himself. Under his leadership, the Kazakhstan federation has implemented large-scale programmes to develop children’s chess and train teachers.
It turns out that Wadim Rosenstein — a businessman who himself entered the chess industry through investment and organising competitions — is questioning the competence of another businessman on the basis of his sporting credentials.
Moreover, professionally managing an international federation requires not only the ability to play, but also the ability to attract funding, work with national organisations and implement long-term development programmes. These are precisely the qualities FIDE delegates were meant to assess at the September election. However, the way Rosenstein presented his own candidacy to them deserves separate attention.
A campaign in which the candidate was not always present
The FIDE presidential election took place in Samarkand on 26 September 2026. In the weeks leading up to the vote, the candidates had the opportunity to present their positions publicly and answer questions from the chess community.
The first telling episode occurred on 9 September during a debate organised by Chess.com. All three candidates were invited to take part, and American grandmaster Maurice Ashley served as moderator. Rosenstein began with an opening statement, but a few minutes later the connection with him was lost. The organisers tried to restore contact, but the businessman never returned to the broadcast.
The reason for Wadim Rosenstein’s disappearance remains unclear. Yet in his opening speech he had promised to be a president available to the chess community around the clock. At the very first public debate, that commitment could not be put to the test.
Rosenstein also did not attend the Q&A session in Samarkand — another opportunity to engage directly with participants in the electoral process. While the other two candidates discussed funding for national federations, the commercialisation of chess, infrastructure development and governance reform, Rosenstein left a significant share of the public’s questions without public answers.
The contrast became especially noticeable during the candidates’ closing statements. One presented plans to increase funding for national federations, develop school chess and digitalise the sector. The other proposed his own model for FIDE’s commercial development, revenue redistribution and reform of its governance structure. Their programmes came with specific financial targets and explanations of how they would be implemented.
Rosenstein, by contrast, limited himself to a short speech of about five minutes. Without a comparable visual presentation or financial model, he spoke about the need to expand children’s access to chess, but did not explain to the delegates what resources he intended to use to put his proposals into practice.
The key question here is not why Rosenstein lost, but how convincingly he used the opportunities he was given to win.
The vote in Samarkand showed that the candidacy of the businessman from Kazakhstan received the most support from delegates already in the first round. In the end, this candidate won under the established voting procedure. The second candidate, who was eliminated in the first round, accepted the result and congratulated the winner once voting was over. Rosenstein chose a different path — contesting the outcome and continuing the public confrontation.
In an October interview, he stated that he does not recognise the election results because he believes the winner violated Article 9.7 of the FIDE Electoral Regulations, which prohibits collusion aimed at manipulating the vote. As grounds for his suspicions, he cited an alleged agreement between the candidates. No evidence has been made public that such an agreement existed at all, or that it unlawfully altered the result.
Rosenstein also called the campaign one of the dirtiest in FIDE’s history and claimed that he had been threatened with Ukrainian sanctions in an effort to make him withdraw his candidacy. Who made these threats, and whether they actually took place, is unknown.
The Russian business that supposedly no longer exists
In his new interview, Rosenstein devoted considerable attention to allegations about his own ties to Russia, while levelling similar accusations at the election winner. Over the summer and autumn, Ukrainian and European media published reports on the Russian side of the businessman’s operations. Some of them contained serious allegations, including alleged sanctions evasion and supplies of industrial products potentially subject to export restrictions.
Rosenstein rejects all of these allegations. He calls the reports manipulation and says he has never acted on instructions from the Russian authorities. However, the questions about his business did not come out of nowhere. In September, Deutsche Welle published an investigation into the Russian company WR RUS, owned by Wadim Rosenstein. According to the journalists, the Moscow company’s profit grew from roughly €300,000 to €1.7 million between 2022 and 2025.
Moreover, DW found documents confirming that the German companies WR Logistics and WR Certification cooperated with the Russian WR RUS at least until the end of 2023. The Russian company’s financial records also show a dividend payment for 2023 of about €30,000, presumably to the businessman and one of his German entities.
Meanwhile, in July 2026 Wadim Rosenstein told DW that the Russian companies continue to exist only on paper and that he no longer has any influence over their activities. In the October interview, the businessman added that the Russian business is run by an external manager, and that he himself is not involved in its operations and does not receive dividends. This information does not prove that Rosenstein personally violated sanctions law, but it fully explains why journalists are interested in his Russian assets.
Thus, Wadim Rosenstein, who demands unconditional transparency from FIDE’s new leadership, has yet to give the wider public an equally detailed picture of his own business.
From accusations of foul play to accusations against the winner
In the interview with RBC-Ukraine, Rosenstein said he does not understand why Ukrainian media criticise him but view his rival favourably. At the same time, the businessman claims that the new FIDE president was born in Moscow and continues to actively do business there. However, he renounced his Russian citizenship in 2022 after obtaining citizenship of Kazakhstan. The claim of ongoing active business in Russia is knowingly false: the election winner’s company is registered in the United States, and its shares are traded on the Nasdaq exchange, which proves the company has left the Russian market.
Thus, on the one hand, Wadim Rosenstein demands that journalists provide concrete evidence for their accusations, while on the other he relies on knowingly false information about his former election opponent — which looks like a double standard.
Now, a month after the election, instead of a substantive discussion about how international chess should develop, the public is getting a new interview full of harsh personal judgments unsupported by any evidence. Rosenstein is now trying to challenge not only the circumstances of the vote but also the professional qualities of the elected leadership, going so far as to propose settling the matter over the chessboard. But the FIDE president is not elected on the basis of a personal game between the candidates. He is chosen by national federations that assess management experience, financial capacity, development strategy and the ability to represent the interests of the global chess community. And for now, the chess community is left with the impression that, rather than analysing the reasons for his own defeat, Wadim Rosenstein prefers to question his opponent’s victory again and again.
