Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik has been posting a lot of “explosive” statements on X (previously Twitter) since he was publicly linked to the unfortunate death of American Grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky, who died on Sunday.
The public connection comes from their cheating issue in 2024, when Kramnik openly and repeatedly accused Naroditsky of cheating at online chess.
Naroditsky’s Death and Kramnik’s Defense
A chess club in Charlotte, North Carolina, conveyed the news of Naroditsky’s death on social media. They uploaded a message from the Grandmaster’s family on Monday. The statement didn’t say what caused the death, and it’s still not clear what happened.
As the public outcry grew, Kramnik went on X to explain himself and said he wasn’t to blame for the disaster. He tweeted a screenshot of a note he said he got from a “friend and chess fan” a few days previously. This made it seem like Naroditsky might not have been in the correct frame of mind during his last stream.
“What happened exactly?” The caption that went with the screenshot said that Kramnik wrote it. “Because a friend of mine who is a chess fan sent me this two days ago, and at least I did what I could to warn people to do something right away in my posts.”
Kramnik went on, directing his words at individuals who like to blame and shame instead than help: “Awful tragedy, I hope it is fully looked into.”
The writings imply that Kramnik thought he had warned others about a possible catastrophe involving Naroditsky before he died, which makes his earlier warnings seem more like an attempt to help than an act of malice. The cheating scandal has caused a lot of stress in the chess world for a long time, and now the loss of the popular young Grandmaster has made things even worse.