Former international chess boss details his ‘alien encounter’
Former head of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who also served as president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia, has claimed he was abducted by aliens back in the 1990s.
Ilyumzhinov detailed the “encounter” in an interview with the Sports.ru website, published on Tuesday.
“[It happened in] September 1997, in Moscow. They called me to the balcony. I went out and soon found myself on their ship. Everything was simple,” he claimed.
The aliens turned out to be humanoids, “slightly taller than us,” sporting yellow suits, according to the ex-FIDE boss. Ilyumzhinov claimed he spoke to his abductors for some eight hours – but was only missing from his apartment for about one hour.
Ilyumzhinov also said he asked the “aliens” why they did not reveal themselves to humanity, and was told Earth-dwellers were not yet up to their standards.
I asked why they would not open up, would not tell everyone about themselves. One of them replied: “Well, you don’t communicate with ants. Your level of civilization has not matured yet.”
In the interview, Ilyumzhinov also explained why he had remained silent about his otherworldly experience for over a decade. He first revealed it to the press in 2010, only when “asked” by “aliens” to do so.
“It’s fashionable to stir hype now. But there was no such thing at that time, and I myself was popular already. Why would I need negative fame? I just thought I’d tell the truth about it, moreover, they asked for that themselves,” he stated.
The former official deemed that publicly revealing the truth back then would have been too damaging to his public image, and moreover, would not have been appreciated by then-president Boris Yeltsin.
Nevertheless, the ex-Kalmykia chief insisted that he privately told Yeltsin about the supposed encounter, and the president brushed off the story, telling him to “go and do some work.” Ilyumzhinov also stated that he discussed the matter with multiple other unspecified heads of state, and some replied that they had also had extra-terrestrial encounters.
“Several national presidents told me that they had contact with aliens. They do not talk about it publicly, because they are afraid that they might be deemed crazy,” he said.
Ilyumzhinov led Kalmykia from 1993 to 2010, and served as the head of FIDE for more than two decades, from 1995 to 2018.
