"This is not his first official visit; we are very familiar and he had been to Chisinau several times in recent years. Kirsan Nikolaevich provided assistance, including financial, for the opening of hundreds of chess classes. I would like to note that with his help we have been able to create territorial chess organizations in 25 regions of the country," said Igor Dodon.
In turn, Ilyumzhinov on behalf of the FIDE Presidential Board has congratulated Igor Dodon with a victory in the presidential elections. "All chess players in the world and there are more than 600 million happily welcomed your victory because you are our colleague. We are very glad," he said.
"My first visit to Moldova as the President of Kalmykia and FIDE President was in 1997. I held one of the first meetings of the FIDE Presidential Board in Chisinau. I like your country, here is a good aura and local people like chess and revere chess traditions," said Ilyumzhinov.
Igor Dodon also said that next week he is going to apply to the Government for the inclusion of chess into the school curriculum in Moldova.
This was confirmed by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who noted that FIDE is interested in developing the project "Chess in Schools". Ilyumzhinov brought 1500 chess sets as a gift. They will be passed to the schools of the republic. Another gift was reservation of two nominees of the President of FIDE for the talented chess players of Moldova.
"We have a programme to support talented players. Many of its members have achieved good results. We would like to start and develop this programme in your country. As your friend, I want to reserve two nominees of FIDE President and you can send at your discretion the top two players straight to the World Cup without preliminary participation in the European Championship. We donate you these FIDE nominations," said Ilyumzhinov.
Igor Dodon decided to give one of the two nominations to the chess players from the left bank of the Dniester. "There are very good players, they have won the Moldovan title in their group. As part of your next visit, we'll go in Transnistria in order to hold a chess championship there. I think that chess will play an important role in the unification of our country," said the President of the Republic of Moldova.
Afterwards Ilyumzhinov and Dodon visited the lyceum "Universul", where a chess class was opened five years ago. After that, the head of FIDE opened the Moldova Chess Championship. The ceremony was held at the Republican Chess Club.
At the end of the visit, the two presidents together with the Bashkan (Governor) of the Gagauz autonomy Irene Vlach took part in the opening of the Gagauzia Chess Championship. In addition, 200 chess sets were donated to local schools.
"We have agreed with the President of FIDE to hold the first international tournament among Turkic peoples in Gagauzia. I hope we will be able to do it until the end of this year," wrote Igor Dodon in his Facebook on his visit to autonomy.