The United States Treasury Department announced today that it was removing Kirsan Ilyumzhinov from a list of sanctioned persons by President Donald Trump’s executive order “Providing for the Revocation of Syria Sanctions” issued on June 30.
Ilyumzhinov is a Russian oligarch who owns several banks, a former world champion in chess, a former President of the remote Buddhist Kalmykia Republic in Russia, and the former president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) for 20 years.
He has repeatedly claimed that he had once been abducted by aliens in Moscow in 1997.
Ilyumzhinov had been on a list of “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDN) by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) since 2015, for providing “material support” to the Syrian regime under former leader Bashar Al-Assad, according to the New York Times, a charge Ilyumzhinov denied.
SDNs have their assets blocked, and US persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them.
Trump lifted sanctions against Syria in an attempt to incentivize improved relations with its neighbor, Israel, after the fall of the Bashar Al-Assad regime last year.
The Assad regime had been a close ally of Russia and was sanctioned by the US and other countries for human rights abuses in its 14-year-long civil war until it was toppled by Syrian rebels in December 2024.
“The sanctions from the Assad era were really crippling,” Trump said at a Gulf leaders’ summit afterward. “This gives Syria a strong chance to rebuild – and it was my honor to do so.”
“I take this decision as a serious signal about the interest of the US leadership – and personally President Trump – to change the nature of relations with our country,” said Ilyumzhinov, according to the Moscow Times. “I will be happy to meet with Mr. Trump, to thank him for a fairly fair decision, and as a diplomat and the seventh president of FIDE, to share his vision of international development ... and play a game of chess! Good luck, Mr. President!”