In a brave public act, David Navara explains in details what he went through after the baseless allegations of Kramnik. Navara describes the emotional torture by Kramnik’s allegations, the silence of FIDE, their posterior inadequate reaction and total disregard on basic FIDE ethical and moral values. Navara ends his letter with a demand of resignation of Arkady Dvorkovich as FIDE President.
The words of David Navara produced a resounding reaction through the chess world. Here is a second collection of reactions and a full timeline of the story
Timeline of events
23.05.2025 Navara publishes an open letter about Kramnik’s actions
23.05.2025 Reactions to Navara’s open letter – Aronian, Polgar, etc
23.05.2025 Navara and Kramnik to meet at FIDE World Rapid and Blitz
24.05.2025 David Navara, “I firmly believe that Mr Dvorkovich should resign”
24.05.2025 Kramnik, “I am deeply disappointed Navara participates in unjust PR campaign against me”
24.05.2025 Kramnik rage-blocks Chessdom over a comment on David Navara’s case
24.05.2025 Live: David Navara at French Top 16
25.05.2025 Kramnik admits to allegations, FIDE has grounds to act
25.05.2025 Open call to action for FIDE
Naka Make The Run!: The level of GAS LIGHTING by Kramnik is staggering.
Thorsten Cmiel: They should also publish what EDC found in case of Carlsen – Niemann. The actual cases are the result we see with VK because some are more equal in the world of chess an can do whatever they want without being punished.
Naka Make The Run!: Tournaments must stop inviting Kramnik to play
MrDodgy: every single account defending kramnik has numbers in their name
Mark Sheldon: The “extremely low probabilities” Kramnik quotes do not take any account of sample size, which is key to the calculation. Since he refuses to clarify, one can only assume that he either fundamentally misunderstands how statistics work or is simply misusing them maliciously. […] I am confident that no other player, not even Magnus, could damage Kramnik’s reputation any more than he has himself with his misuse of statistics & unwillingness to face criticism. The threat here is hollow: any Western court would quickly throw out such a case with prejudice.
Srinath Narayanan to Emil Sutovsky
Emil, in my experience, the procedure for making an ethics committee is so daunting that it by itself becomes a deterrent. But secondly, I don’t believe that an official ethics complaint by any particular player is required to take cognizance of Mr.Kramnik’s open accusations of fairplay violations against many notable chess players. https://ethics.fide.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Decision_Case_2_2023_final_final.pdf is a link to the ethics committee case filed by Fide fairplay commission against Mr.Carlsen. The offence made out was ‘Case 2/2023: “Alleged unfounded accusations of cheating and disparagement of the interests and good name of chess as a sport”. Given that Mr.Kramnik has made accusations and continues to make accusations against several notable top GM’s and continues to remain unapologetic about it, I don’t feel that it is necessary for one of the players to step up and make an ethics committee complaint. I feel that Fide can act if Fide wants to, one way or another, and it is high time that Fide does so.
