"When we see so much evil in the world, it is easy to lose hope," writes the 13 World Champion Garry Kasparov in his newsletter GK The 13th, published on Friday the 13th of May. For Kasparov, who was born on April 13, 1963 (it was a Saturday), 13 is a lucky number.

"When evil rises, we find heroes among us as well," he writes. "Brave Ukrainians return from all around the world to defend their homeland; Brave Russians protest the Putin regime by the tens of thousands. We live in an age of heroes. Martyrs and patriots walk among us. Let us do everything we can to help those defending democracy to win their fights, because they are fighting for all of us. Slava Ukraini. Glory to heroes."

You can read Kasparov's latest newsletter here. And here are subjects it deals with:

Table of Contents

1. Featured:
   1. Speaking with the EU-US Delegation
   2. Speaking with Romanian Foreign Minister Aurescu
   3. Garry on Lockdown: The Real Exchange Rate Between Crypto and Freedom
   4. Consensus 2022
2. Stories I'm Keeping an Eye On:
   1. Victory Day
   2. Forced Migrations, Concentration Camps, and the Gulag Archipelago
3. Recommended Reading:
   1. Report of the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions
4. My Latest Clips: My Writing, Interviews, and Articles

Highlights

• Kasparov spoke with EU Ambassador to the US, Stavros Lambrinidis, about the need for the free world to stand up against Putin.
• During a trip to Romania (for the Superbet Chess Classic) he met with Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu.
• Earlier this year, he joined the BBC documentary Rise of the Nazis to discuss Stalin’s alliance with Hitler and the Soviet-Nazi pact. Three years ago, on the 80th anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet alliance, he talked about the new Molotov-Ribbentrops, how the free world had allowed Putin to become a threat to democracy everywhere.
• Since his book Winter is Coming, Kasparov has argued for the free world to use its massive economic soft power to punish dictators when they attack democracy.

Finally Kasparov has outlined the "right conditions" for Russian President Putin's fall. Here are some of the articles on the subject that have appeared in the international press.

Kasparov meeting with Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki. "We discussed helping Ukraine against Putin's war, and not repeating the mistakes of the past," Garry writes on his Twitter page. Presumably they also discussed this prophetic speech he had held in Warsaw seven years ago.

Recent TED talk by Garry Kasparov

If you want to concentrate on chess, it's a good time to pay a visit to Kasparov Chess: