Anika Begay
Russia is no stranger to unique poisonings. State operatives have been known to use everything from polonium tea to the deadly nerve agent “Novichok” when attempting to assassinate both defectors in the UK and domestic political rivals like Alexei Navalny. But a new “first” in the long history of poisonings was discovered this month in the Russian republic of Dagestan, where a 40-year-old chess player named Amina Abakarova allegedly attempted to poison a rival by depositing liquid mercury on and around her chessboard.
Malcolm Pein, the British Chess Federation’s director of international chess, told the UK’s Telegraph that he had “never seen anything like it before… This is the first recorded case of anyone using a toxic substance, to my knowledge, in the history of chess.” Usually, he said, chess rivals rely on “psychological” tactics.
Oliver Carroll, Ukraine war correspondent for The Economist, summed up the situation with a bit of sarcasm on social media: “I know by Russian doping standards it’s maybe only a 7 out of 10. But still…”
Mercury near the Caspian Sea
The strange story began on August 2, when a regional chess tournament was taking place in Makhachkala, a Russian city on the Caspian Sea just north of Azerbaijan. According to the Telegram channel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Dagestan, emergency services were called after 30-year-old Umayganat Osmanova fell ill during a chess game.
Osmanova said she saw small gray or silver “beads” rolling out from under her side of the board, but apparently this didn’t seem strange to her until she started feeling sick. A Chess.com article translated some of Osmanova’s observations about what happened. “I still feel sick,” she said. “In the first few minutes, I felt a shortness of breath and a taste of iron in my mouth. I must have spent about five hours on this board. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t seen it before.”
These symptoms are consistent with exposure to elemental mercury, the liquid or “live mercury” version of mercury sometimes used in thermometers. According to the Cleveland Clinic, this form of mercury is “usually harmless to touch or ingest because its slippery consistency is not absorbed through the skin or intestines.” But if you breathe in some, be careful: Symptoms occur “immediately” and can include coughing, difficulty breathing, nausea, bleeding gums, and a “metallic taste in the mouth.”
Tournament officials reviewed security camera footage, where they saw Abakarova walking into a nearly empty room with chess tables about 20 minutes before the start of the match. (In one news account, Abakarova had casually asked in advance whether there were such cameras at the venue.) In the footage, Abakarova allegedly walked up to a particular table, pulled a small vial from her bag, and apparently smeared something on the pieces and the table itself.
The security camera footage was quickly posted online and can now be viewed on YouTube.
Sazhid Sazhidov, the Minister of Sports of the Republic of Dagestan, posted a note on Telegram after footage of the incident began circulating, claiming that “a multiple winner of these competitions, Amina Abakarova from Makhachkala, treated the table at which her opponent, the equally titled European champion Umayganat Osmanova from Kaspiysk, was to play with an unknown substance, which, as it turned out later, consisted of mercury compounds.”
