Popular Site Chess.com Blocked by Russian Authorities

Popular chess site chess.com has been blocked by Russian authorities for alleged violations against Russian chess players. Sergey Karjakin, Russian elite Grandmaster and outspoken Putin supporter has been recently banned by the site and appealed to the authorities to investigate chess.com.

The site has voiced support for Ukraine after Russia attacked the country. Later, chess.com switched the flag of its Russian members to FIDE. According to Karjakin, this amounts to a severe violation of Russia’s rules. The country’s Prosecutor’s office has requested to ban the site.

Chess.com has been active in Russia and recently invested in Russian-languages streaming, adding Alexandra Kosteniuk, former Women’s World Champion, to its list of streamers.

World Chess would like to praise chess.com and other members of the chess community that has united against the war and call for immediate ceasefire.

Update: According to news site Meduza, two pro-Ukraine articles by chess.com resulted in an outright ban because chess.com uses “https” (secure) architecture, and blocking of a singe page results in a full block on the site. It is unclear whether chess.com will remove the articles in question to make the site available to Russian chess players.

Chess.com responded to the ban by inviting the Russian users to deploy VPN when attempting to use the site from Russia.

Sergey Karjakin, who is, according to the news reports, responsible for reporting chess.com to the authorities, suggeste in a tweet that chess.com should publicly apologize to Russia for ‘spreading fakes’ in exchange for allowing chess.com to work in the country.

Chess.com is one of many sites that have been banned by the Russian authorities after the country invaded Ukraine and adopted draconian laws against free speech.