This is primarily due to state support in Kazakhstan. Three years ago, in June, I and your President opened the World Chess Championship in rapid and blitz and we even played a game of chess. Nursultan Nazarbayev uttered wise words about the need to keep up in the rapidly changing world. He referred to that championship when a game lasted from 5 to 25 minutes and one had to think quickly. We even took these words as an epigraph for the subsequent competitions.
This time I came to the opening of Astana Open 2017, which gathered 600 chess players from 10 countries. We have opened the central chess club of Astana today. I would like to thank one of the most dynamically developing Chess Federation of Kazakhstan, Chess Federation of Astana, entrepreneurs and parents, who established the club with their own money.
By the way, girls play better in the Kazakhstan team. Probably, it is because Kazakh women are slightly smarter than the male half. They think faster. I say it as President of FIDE.
-In the future, we women are going to rule the world as many centuries ago ...
We have separate women's world championships (in which the World Champions are mostly Chinese women) and there are men's championships, in which we allow women to play. But a male chess player cannot participate in a women's tournament. This is discrimination. And women are weaker players according to results.
Here are the famous Hungarian sisters Polgar: Zhuzha became the Women’s World Champion but Judit's father forbade her playing in women's championships. Judit played in men's tournaments only. Yes, she won against Kasparov and Karpov but she did not become a champion. Chinese Hou Yifan -- Multiple World Champion -- takes part in men's championships but she never became a champion.
Thus, when a woman will become the World Chess Champion in men’s championship then we would be able to say that the matriarchy is re-established.
- What task do you set as head of FIDE for the near future?
FIDE is the largest international sports federation in terms of the number of competitions and participants: it joins 188 countries; holds more than 100000 competitions a year and 600 million play chess.
I set the task to teach one billion people to play chess until 2020. Our slogan is: "one billion chess players -- one billion clever people". The more people will follow the rule "first think then make a move" the fewer wars will be on Earth.
Now we are facing a lot of financial and economic problems, religious wars and ISIS has appeared from ‘nowhere’. It is not happening because of the lack of oil, diamonds or metals. We have enough natural resources to feed seven billion people. We can print any amount of dollars, tenge or roubles. We live badly because there are not enough thinking people.
If there are one billion chess players this will be a critical mass for seven billion people of the world, which will make it more likely that people will become ministers, politicians, deputies, kings, presidents or just good doctors and teachers. Hence, the number of incorrect decisions will decrease.
You know, when I introduced chess as a compulsory subject in Kalmykia, the academic performance increased by 40 percent in one year. And after a few years, Kalmykia was the leading region among 83 Russian regions in 36 indicators. Our level of education was recognized as the best. A Moscow team of scientists concluded that it was owing to chess.
Every politician must also play chess. Churchill intentionally used to ask the government job applicants: "Do you play chess or don’t?" And when I became the President of Kalmykia, anyone who wanted to become a member of parliament or a minister was enrolled in chess club.
- Politics in sports and sports in politics. How did this issue affect chess?
It is not only chess and sports but our whole life is related to politics. When we are 18, we are entering a political life: we can be elected to any legislative body and even a President of the country and we get the right to vote.
Although I always say that sports should be separated from politics but they are interrelated. When we hold the Olympic Games or world football championships or our chess competitions, we try to carry them out stage by stage in different countries and continents. Today, it will be on the African continent and in Asia or Europe tomorrow.
At one time the World Champion was Boris Spassky -- a representative of the Soviet school-- and the challenger was Bobby Fisher -- a representative of the American school. That’s when politics got involved -- whose ideology was more powerful: the Soviet communist or capitalist. And there was arms race. And the match between Spassky and Fisher in Reykjavik was the apogee of political struggle (Fischer eventually beat Spassky).
When the challenger to the chess crown -- grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi left the USSR for Switzerland, he was called a dissident who opposed the communist system.
Kasparov appeared as a child of perestroika. He played chess and later went into politics and constantly confused chess with politics. He left FIDE in 1993 and created his Professional Chess Association. He opposed the elections of the President of FIDE in 2014, which was purely political move.
We have ‘one country, one vote’ principle same as the International Olympic Committee. Kasparov tried to change this principle believing that a large country should have more votes and a small one should have less. We, as sportsmen, believe that it is unfair: every nation, every country has the right to participate in the resolution of certain issues. After that the doping scandal happened and IPC banned the Russian participants.
During the FIDE Presidential elections, Kasparov and the whole Western ideological machine were saying that Ilyumzhinov was a Kremlin protégée, a Russian official who cannot manage the International Chess Federation. That’s what politicization is.
And recall that on November 24, 2015, the US government included me in the sanctions list because I and President of Syria Bashar Assad had opened a beautiful chess club with a swimming pool in Damascus three years ago. Before that, a chess club was opened in Aleppo and I donated textbooks and chess sets.
Last year in November, I organized a match for the title of World Champion: Sergei Karyakin played against Magnus Carlsen, but I was not allowed by the US government to open the event. By the way, I am the only sanctioned person who is suing the US government for $50 billion. I think that they should apologize to me and pay moral compensation. Now there is a pre-trial with the US Treasury.
So I never left politics. I meet with heads of states, chairmen of governments, parliamentarians and ministers every week. Today, I am in America, tomorrow in Asia and the day after tomorrow in Africa. I have many friends -- presidents, prime ministers. They ask my advice and I give it to them. My friends were the Pope John Paul II  and His Holiness the 12th Dalai Lama. I met with Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev and Lech Walesa.
- What are you interested in besides chess and politics?
Telecommunications. We introduced the 4G internet in Vietnam. The Kirsan messenger has been created, which is already used in dozens of countries. It's like WhatsApp, Viber and Telegram. The difference is that our messenger works better where the internet connection is slow. It is because the programme was created by smart chess players.
We also trade. We do a lot of things. I took up business once again. I had more free time after I left the post of President of Kalmykia. Although, as President of FIDE, I visit many countries: about 70-80 a year.
As far as I remember, there were 108 countries in 2014. I've been to Costa Rica, London, Brussels, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, and Mongolia over the past three weeks.
- What does Kirsan Ilyumzhinov dream about, besides teaching one billion people to play chess?
I have many projects. A month ago, I opened "Chess for peace" company in London -- a charity foundation to help autistics. Every fifth born on our planet will be autistic by 2030. Last year, the Red Cross called autism a pandemic, the cause of which is not known for certain.
We invented the technique to make children to become more or less normal with the help of chess and various activities. We also help those suffering cerebral palsy.
- You are close to the Buddhism.
My grandmother was a Buddhist. When my parents left for work, she took out a statue of Buddha from the trunk. I asked her why we couldn’t go to khurul. In Kalmykia there was not a single Buddhist temple at the time. Everything was blown up during the war. Grandmother said: "You will build the one when you grow up." I grew up and built the largest Buddhist temple in Europe and dozens of Buddhist stupas in Kalmykia, India, and other countries. I have also built Orthodox churches, mosque, synagogue and a Protestant church.
I consider religion a part of the universal human civilization, although I am an atheist. We were taught in school that a man came from a monkey and I believe in it. On the other hand, I believe in the Absolute, the Cosmos and that we all are of a cosmic origin.
That's why I tried to meet with Baba Vanga. By the way, in one of the episodes of the "Vangelia" TV series I asked her to tell us where an oil refinery will be built. That meeting took place in 1996. 12 years later, "Lukoil" company found oil and is building a large complex now.
Tell us about the meetings with aliens.
This is also a part of my life same as Baba Vanga, the Pope and the Dalai Lama. We know only three dimensions but there are nine. There are other worlds in parallel with our own.
I had repeated meetings with aliens. And I was not alone. Boys from the first grade saw the flying saucers when they played football. The animals saw it too: the cows lied down and the dogs were trying to burrow into the ground. I saw several saucers near the Ayu-Dag Mountain in Artek in the Crimea and the aliens decided to talk with me.
And NASA registers more than four thousand UFO contacts in general per year.
- What was the format of your communication with the brothers of the mind?
At first I did not understand. It's like my friend the Arab sheikh, who lamented that he had failed to take an interpreter before meeting with Baba Vanga. But as soon as we entered her room Baba Vanga answered the questions in our heads. Telepathy exists. Our ancestors --Atlanteans -- were communicating using telepathy. Like the Aboriginal people who were recently discovered in Australia.
- What did you talk about with the aliens?
About records and jeans, weather in the sky and just about life.
- What forecasts did they give?
I cannot tell. Everything is normal, believe in yourself, and do not eat your own kind, horses, beef and dog meat.
- So we are offered to become vegan? Why?
My mother worked as a veterinarian at a meat processing plant, and I saw tens of cows standing in the queue. They were first electrocuted and then their ribs were cut by chain saws. Others stood in line and cried.
Animals are as smart as we are. They have a soul and can love and hate. And we consider ourselves the only intelligent civilization on this planet, although there are thousands, millions and billions of other civilizations in the universe. And the aliens told me: there will be no contacts until you stop being egoists.

Nazgul Abzhekenova