Hunched over a chess table, chin wedged into his knuckles, eyes fixed in concentration, a familiar figure returned to Russia’s television screens this week. He had been little seen of late: after 2005, Garry Kasparov, who retired from chess to become the face of political opposition to Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, all but disappeared from the airwaves.

Yet as Mr Kasparov played a mini-championship in Spain marking the 25th anniversary of his five-month “marathon match” against Anatoly Karpov – a man he describes on his blog as his “eternal opponent” – an informal Kremlin ban appeared to lift. “We are pleasantly surprised that they show his face at all,” says Marina Litvinovich, Mr Kasparov’s spokesperson, though she notes that the broadcasts “show him exclusively as a chess player, not as a political figure.”