Garry Kimovich Kasparov

Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist and commentator. From 1984 until his retirement in 2005, Kasparov was ranked world No. 1 for a record 255 months overall for his career.. Kasparov also holds records for the most consecutive professional tournament victories and Chess Oscars .Kasparov was the world’s highest-rated player when he retired from professional chess in 2005

After retiring, he devoted his time to politics and writing. He formed the United Civil Front movement and joined as a member of The Other Russia, a coalition opposing the administration and policies of Vladimir Putin. In 2008, he announced an intention to run as a candidate in that year’s Russian presidential race, but after encountering logistical problems in his campaign for which he blamed “official obstruction”, he withdrew. In the wake of the Russian mass protests that began in 2011, he announced in 2013 that he had left Russia for the immediate future out of fear of persecution. Since 2014, he holds Croatian citizenship and since 2020 resides in Podstrana near Split (prior to that, he lived in New York City).

Kasparov is currently chairman of the Human Rights Foundation and chairs its International Council. In 2017, he founded the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI), an American political organization promoting and defending liberal democracy in the U.S. and abroad. He serves as chairman of the group.

Amb.Michael McFaul

Michael Anthony McFaul is an American academic and diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. McFaul is currently the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor in International Studies in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, where he is the Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also a Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. Prior to his nomination to the ambassadorial position, McFaul worked for the U.S. National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and senior director of Russian and Eurasian affairs. In that capacity, he was the architect of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Russian reset policy.

Max Boot

MaxBoot is a Russian-American author, consultant, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian.He worked as a writer and editor for Christian Science Monitor and then for The Wall Street Journal in the 1990s. He is now Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributor to The Washington Post. He has written for numerous publications such as The Weekly Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, and he has also authored books of military history. In 2018, Boot published The Road Not Taken, a biography of Edward Lansdale, and The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right.”