The Speech I Couldn’t Give in Person

GARRY KASPAROV

NOV 10, 2026

I was invited to speak at this year’s Berlin Freedom Week. Here’s what I said in my speech yesterday—and why I didn’t say it in person:

Berlin Freedom Week has now become a tradition. It coincides with my own anniversary of becoming a world chess champion on November 9, 1985.

I also remember another November 9: November 9, 1989. I recall it quite well. As a young Soviet champion, I had unique access to the West through my competitions. Over the preceding years, I’d seen the promise of the democratic world and the cracks in the Iron Curtain. In a single night, those cracks burst open.

But as we reflect on November 9, let’s remember that dates don’t make a difference—people do. The fall of the Berlin Wall is not about November 9. It is about the brave East German and Polish and Czech and Soviet dissidents who risked their lives fighting the communist regimes. Biermann and Walesa and Havel and Sakharov. It is about the bold Western leaders who outmaneuvered and outpressured the rigid party bosses in Moscow. Kennedy and Reagan, Thatcher and Kohl.

Because of these men and women, who possessed strong values and clarity of purpose, we celebrate November 9. But with different players, at different moments, November 9 has also been a black mark on the calendar. November 9 is Kristallnacht in 1938. It is the second day of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923.

People count. Actions count. Dates are just a way of organizing them.

It is much the same with treaties and alliances. German Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg was not wrong when he said, in 1914, that a treaty is merely “a scrap of paper.” It is the leaders who guarantee a treaty, who give it teeth. This is why you will never hear me celebrate NATO’s Article 5. Not because I don’t support NATO—I believe in the principles behind the alliance—but I support NATO doing something to live up to those principles. To support Ukrainian victory by providing them with everything that they need to defeat Russia.

That’s the bare minimum.

We have to stop resting on our laurels, celebrating the past, and take action with our view firmly on the horizon.

Let this be the last Berlin Freedom Week where we pat ourselves on the back for the fall of the wall, and let this be the first Berlin Freedom Week where we finally get on a war footing and take the fight to the dictators’ doorsteps.

I have found that urgency mostly lacking in Europe. There are signs of resistance. In the Baltics. In Scandinavia. In Poland. The places where the memory of Russian imperialism is genetic. Yet even there, resolve is slipping. What can we say when the Norwegian prime minister and Finnish president chat with Vladimir Putin on the phone and preach about “dialogue”?

A month ago, I was at the Warsaw Security Forum. No matter how many Russian violations of Polish sovereignty, no matter the brutality of the war right over the border in Ukraine, no matter the centuries of Russian colonization of Poland, no one was ready to say in public that they were in a war with Russia and that Europe must respond accordingly.

And in the centers of power—in Brussels, in Paris, here in Berlin? There was never any fight to begin with.

No matter how transparently Russia aggresses against the democratic world, Europe remains stubbornly detached. That detachment invites Russia to be even more brazen in its actions abroad.

That brings me to why I am not in Berlin.

In the world of conferences and high-level forums, no absence is more acutely felt than that of the speaker who delivers their remarks via pre-recorded video. My friends, I regret that I cannot be with you in Berlin now.

As many of you may be aware, I was informed recently that I am likely the target of a Russian intelligence operation whose objective is to take my life. People whom I trust, who know how these things work, have advised me that traveling to Berlin would present an unnecessary risk to my safety.

I do not bring this up out of bitterness. This is not about a personal inconvenience for me, Garry Kasparov. This is about the fact that your former chancellor is a Russian lobbyist. It is about the fact that your former intelligence chief was a Russian asset. It is about the fact that Russia launched a drone attack on one of your airports, in the city of Leipzig, and your leaders could not call it for what it is: war, plain and simple. No modifiers. No qualifiers. The fact that I am unsafe on the streets of Berlin is merely a symptom of a deeper moral and political rot in the heart of Europe.

Most Europeans have not known dictatorship in their lifetimes. It is a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because no one should have to experience the indignity of authoritarianism on their skin. Yet it’s a curse, because it strips your leaders of their drive. Like a fish in water, democracy is all that you’ve ever known. You do not fight like people who know the alternative.

This is where my colleagues at the World Liberty Congress and Renew Democracy Initiative come in. We dissidents know what dictatorship is like. We understand President Reagan’s appeal, that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. If you understand the stakes, and if you will fight, then we are ready to join you on the frontlines of the global fight between the forces of freedom and tyranny.

And there is momentum, if you are willing to seize upon it. Look at the changes in Hungary. In Serbia. Last week, in the United States. But just as with November 9, 1989, it comes down to people and action. You can’t just celebrate freedom—you have to make it happen.

Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.

https://rdi.org/