Valentina Evgenyevna Gunina is a Russian chess grandmaster. She is the two-time World Blitz Chess Champion, has won the Women's European Individual Chess Championship three times, and has won the Russian Women's Championship five times. She was a member of the gold medal-winning Russian team at the Women's Chess Olympiads of 2010, 2012, 2014, at the Women's European Team Chess Championships of 2007, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2017, 2019 and at the Women's World Team Chess Championship of 2017.

Murmansk is a port city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast in the far northwest part of Russia. It sits on both slopes and banks of a modest ria or fjord, Kola Bay, an estuarine inlet of the Barents Sea, with its bulk on the east bank of the inlet. It is in the north of the rounded Kola Peninsula which covers most of the oblast. The city is 108 kilometres (67 mi) from the border with Norway and 182 kilometres (113 mi) from the border with Finland.