This is an interesting weekend interview in the WSJ with Garry Kasparov, who is apparently taking very seriously his role as ‘moderator’ for the “Other Russia” coalition (moderator so far; as the editor notes, Kasparov does not necessarily exclude representing the “Other Russia” as its presidential candidate, with hopes of checkmating Putin). The only major problem is, I think, that despite Vladimir Putin’s invisibility in chess, relative to Mr. Kasparov, he does have a hell of a comparative advantage over the chess grandmaster, in judo. And guess who gets to make the rules and choose which way to combat… I’d suggest therefore that they find a top judoka (I am not so sure Mikhail Kasyanov is -or can be- one, though he probably knows Putin’s Harai Goshi technique much better than Kasparov does… ) if they want to be a serious challenge to Putin (or to Putin’s to-be-protégé, since it is rather unlikely that Putin would candidate himself for a third time- that would require some fixes to the current Russian Constitution that even a black belt 6 dan judoka President might have a hard time justifying…).
