Nickajack wrote on 03/28/21 at 00:18:50:

Yes, war and persecution are excellent reasons for emigrating. But people also move for financial reasons, chessplayers included. In the old days also chessplayers moved for financial reasons, it was very common. One doesn't have to think hard to come up with examples, e.g. Stamma, Philidor, Steinitz, Lasker, the other Lasker, etc., etc. Before the Eastern bloc even existed one could find Russian masters living and working and playing chess throughout Europe. Granted sometimes it was also because of upheaval; if there is upheaval everywhere and repeatedly then it can be difficult to assert that any movement is for financial reasons. Maybe it's just more obvious now because global politics is much more stable than 100 years ago. (Not completely stable, just more stable.)

Leonard Barden puts a different spin on things in his recent column:
'Aronian’s decision comes after the former president and chess fan, Serzh Sargsyan, was ousted in 2018, and the new regime cut support.'

But I agree there's not much to be gained by trying to infer an individual's motivations. What does continue to vex me is how remarkably fluid national allegiances are in chess compared to practically any other sport, where players can cheerfully switch between federations as if changing football clubs, which severely undermines the whole notion of a national team.

I commented on chessbase.com, but there's not that many different ways to say it's fine, nothing wrong with it. People change, circumstances change, the world changes. Consistency for its own sake is not worth a penny.

Still pretty funny to me, how a few months ago he was roaring on twitter that if his country needs him to, he will grab a weapon, join the army, and gun down some Azeris, because national pride and honor and whatever, everything for the motherland!!

.. Now he doesn't even want to play chess for them anymore.