The eccentric Russian president of the world chess federation will not step down despite calls from his colleagues, who say the US sanctions against him have cut the organisation off from financing.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a multimillionaire ally of Vladimir Putin who has visited dictators like Bashar al-Assad and claims to have once been abducted by aliens, told The Telegraph he would not resign and would in fact seek re-election in October's vote. He has been in office since 1995.

“I'm normal, I'm physically healthy, I feel strong. My goal is for a billion people to play chess, so I will run for president of FIDE,” he said, referring to the organisation by its common French acronym.

After a session on Sunday in Belarus, the FIDE presidential board said it was referring Mr Ilyumzhinov to the ethics commission for “spreading lies and defamatory statements” and that he should resign immediately.

UBS will close FIDE's accounts on April 30, and other banks have refused to take on the chess body as a client as long as its president is under US sanctions, the board said.

The United States sanctioned Mr Ilyumzhinov along with his Russian Financial Alliance Bank in 2015 for “materially assisting and acting for or on behalf of the Government of Syria”.