Leaning forward, elbows resting on the table, Anna Ushenina looked hard at the crowded chess board a little after midway through her game against Polina Shuvalova. They were on the extreme right of the stage at the Bhasha Bhawan auditorium inside the sprawling National Library complex, a world away from the din of rush-hour traffic on Thursday evening made worse by a sharp spell of rain. Here, only the low hum of the central cooling system and the clack of the stop-clock disturbed the sound of silence.
Without a way out of the logjam in sight, Ushenina and Shuvalova, the 2012 women’s world champion and the 2018 and 2019 world girls’ under-18 and under-20 champion, settled for a draw in their third and final rapid game of the opening day of the women’s competition of the Tata Steel Chess. A handshake, initiated by Ushenina, and a brief conversation followed.
All perfectly normal in a sport where opponents analyse games, often as soon as they end. Except that Grandmaster Ushenina is from Ukraine and International Master Shuvalova from Russia and this was happening on the 554th day of the war. Ushenina is from Kharkhiv, Ukraine’s second largest city not far from the Russian border, where metro stations are being used as underground classrooms for in-person teaching to protect children from supersonic Russian missiles. Where, as per Ushenina, “a lot of buildings have been destroyed and there is bombing.”
A handshake may not feel normal in the circumstances. Ukrainian-born Maryna Zanevska ended her career refusing to shake hands with Belarussian Aryna Sabalenka at US Open this week. Belarus is backing Russia’s invasion.
“I try not to think about it,” said Ushenina replying to whether playing against a Russian felt different. “If they are allowed to play under the FIDE (world chess body) flag, we cannot do anything about that. So, just focus on the game.”
How difficult is that? “Quite difficult, because, well, you know what has happened to your country and mostly in their country, nothing happened. It is like they are very safe; everyone is safe. And many of them don’t understand this. I have heard that chess players have left Russia to play for another flag. So obviously, they are not supporting what is happening. But many of them are staying there. Well, it’s their choice,” said Ushenina.
A chess.com report from May 2022 said Russian Grandmasters Daniil Yuffa, Grigoriy Oparin, Evgeny Romanov switched countries because they don’t support the invasion. In March 2023, GM Alexandra Kosteniuk (who lost to Ushenina in the final of the online Women’s Speed Chess Championship in 2020) chose to represent Switzerland, two months later Alexander Motylev moved to Romania. Both are from Russia. Last July, Russian GM Kirill Alekseenko became an Austrian. Alekseenko was among the 44 Russian chess players who signed a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking him to stop the war.
Like many sportspersons from Ukraine, like Shakhtar Donetsk who will play Champions League home games in Hamburg, Ushenina has been forced to move. She lives “in a small city in south of France.” She hasn’t been home in over one year and doesn’t know when she can go back. Through patchy internet connection and phone, Ushenina said she kept in touch with friends and relatives back home. “Some places are a little safer than others but you do not know when that will change.”
We are talking in the players’ lounge where world champion medallists at some level outnumber those who are not. On a high stool, Ushenina keeps her coat on because the blast from the air-conditioner is intense. Staring at the roundtable table in front, she said sometimes even the distance she has put between her and home did not help. “You are watching news all the time. What is happening at home and you can’t see the end.”
Chess could have felt like an afterthought in such a time. It has been anything but. Ushenina won the team gold and individual silver at the Chess Olympiad in Chennai in August 2022, team and individual gold at the European Club Cup for women representing Austria’s ASVOe Pamhagen and then the rapid title here in the first edition of the women’s competition.
“It is not one thing, no secret that makes you win or not win,” she said, looking back at 2022. It was a combination of preparation, feeling good going into a tournament and luck, she said.
This is her third tournament in 2023 after the World Cup, where she lost in the third round to compatriot GM Anna Muzychuk who finished third, and the Salamanca Chess Festival in Spain, a open competition where she was fifth among eight participants. “There are not too many big tournaments in summer, that starts from autumn. That means you get some time to rest,” she said.
Rest includes spending time with her eight-year-old cats Tina and Lullu. Being a cat parent can be difficult for a travelling sportsperson; Marketa Vondrousova had to get a cat sitter so that her husband could get a seat at the Wimbledon final. Ushenina doesn’t need that because her mother, who introduced her to chess and would travel with her when she was young, looks after them. “Even though she has cats of her own.”
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