At today's election of the Russian Chess Federation president, the head of FIDE, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov withdrew his candidacy, explaining that he intends to concentrate on working in the international federation.

According to TASS, a member of the federation's advisory council from Ingushetia, Zaurbek Malsagov, along with the president of the chess federations of the Rostov and Moscow regions, Sergey Nesterov, the leading research associate at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ivan Starikov and champion of the Soviet Union in ski jumping, Eduard Suboch, have chances to win the elections.