In October 2006 Svidler visited Kramnik during the World Championship match in Elista and released a joint open letter with Evgeny Bareev protesting against the handling of the controversy and calling for the dismissal of FIDE Vice-Presidents Georgios Makropoulos and Zurab Azmaiparashvili, who sat on the Appeals Committee at the event. He scored 4.5/9 for seventh place on tiebreak at the Tal Memorial and fourth in the Blitz event in November. He finished fourth at the Russian Superfinal in December with 6.5/11. His poor results since September dropped him from fourth to 12th in the world.