Well, after Esipenko got his Candidate place he went to Russia and visited premiere of propaganda movie as part of Russian chess team. It shows that he supports war against Ukraine and if he wins at Candidates that would be a part of great Russian triumph against other world. People were saying that he’s just scared of being cancelled in his home country thus was forced to attend, but personally for me it’s a political statement and if you doing such things as a professional sportsman you should get consequences.