Hero of the day: Russian chess player Alexey Sarana won the final European Championship for Russia

According to the newspaper "Rise", the European Championship in Serbia was the final for Russia. From 2024, Russian chess players will compete in the Asian Championship. The Assembly of the Asian Chess Federation voted for the inclusion of the Russian Federation in the organization in February.

According to RBC, 26-year-old Russian grandmaster Sarana performed at the tournament in a neutral status under the flag of FIDE. These are the requirements of the organization. He scored 8.5 points at the end of 11 rounds. The representatives of Romania and Belgium scored the same number of points, but lost according to the results of tie-breaks.

Earlier, Alexey Sarana condemned Russia's special operation on Ukraine.

The European Championship was held at a hotel in the Vrnjacka Banja resort in Serbia from March 2 to March 13. According to the results of the tournament, the 23 best chess players received the right to play in the World Cup. In addition to Sarana, Russians David Paravyan, Andrey Esipenko and Sergey Azarov will perform there. The prize fund of the championship was € 100 thousand. The winner is entitled to a reward of € 20 thousand.

It should be noted that against the background of the situation with the mandatory neutral status for Russians to perform in a week, three chess players from the Russian Federation changed their sports citizenship at once. The 2006 Russian chess champion Evgeny Alekseev will now represent Israel at international competitions. Earlier it was reported that the 12th world champion Alexandra Kostenyuk on March 3 switched to the flag of Switzerland, on the same day it became known that Alexander Predke, the 54th number of the FIDE rating, will play for Serbia.