Kirsan Ilyumzhinov

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a.k.a. Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov (Кирса́н Никола́евич Илюмжи́нов) or Ülümjin Kirsan (Үлүмҗин Кирсан) was the despotic President of the Republic of Kalmykia in the Russian Federation from 1993 to 2010 and has been the (rather controversial) President of Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE, the World Chess Federation) from 1995 to 2015. He withdrew from FIDE in 2015 after the US Department of the Treasury named him as "materially assisting and acting for or on behalf of the Government of Syria, Central Bank of Syria, Adib Mayaleh, and Batoul Rida."

He is a member of the Kalmyk/Oirat nation (Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), a people descended from Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes who wandered west to the Caspian to establish the only Buddhist nation in Europe.

During an April 26, 2010 television interview with Vladimir Pozner he claimed that he had been visited by extraterrestrials in his Moscow apartment in September 18, 1997.