Happy endings all around, especially for Alireza Firouzja and his legion of fans. Firouzja at the tender age of 18 years and five months, is the youngest player in chess history to break the 2800 barrier. (Magnus Carlsen is the only other player to hit 2800 before turning 19, but he was some months older.) His ridiculous score of 8/9 in the European Team Championship, finishing with a draw against Alexander Grischuk and a win over Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, pushed him over the top (and nearly brought his team to overall victory). He is now 2803.8 on the Live Rating List (which will be rounded up to 2804 at the end of the month), making him #2 in the world. This month alone he leapfrogged seven players, most recently Ding Liren, gaining 34 points between this event and his win in the FIDE Grand Swiss.
That's the happy youth story. The happy middle-age story belongs to Alexei Shirov, who drew with Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Anish Giri in the last two rounds to re-enter the rarified air of the 2700 club. His November was almost as fantastic as Firouzja's, as he gained 29 points and went undefeated in both the FIDE Grand Swiss (where he drew with Firouzja) and the European Team Championship. It's not the Shirov of 20 or even 10 years ago, when he was very much in the hunt for the World Championship, but it's still nice to see him competing on equal terms with 2700s.
A few more comments about Firouzja. First, for all his greatness, which is on increasingly display on an almost daily basis, he did enjoy some good fortune in the last two rounds. Excessive (and needless) risk had him in some trouble against Grischuk in the penultimate round, while Mamedyarov lost a theoretically drawn ending to him in the last round. It's the sort of ending one would expect an amateur or a weak pro (relatively speaking) to lose under pressure. But a super-GM like Mamedyarov? That's the sort of thing that used to happen all the time to Carlsen's opponents when he was an up-and-comer, and it looks like Firouzja has taken his mantle.
Second...will he be the official #2 player at the end of the month? Ding Liren had seemed to have entered hibernation, but then he showed up for an online blitz match against Mamedyarov a couple of weeks ago, and now he's playing a four-game warm-up match with Liu Shanglei. He won the first game to go from 2799 to 2801.6; with another win he overtakes Firouzja. I'm not sure if 3/4 will be enough to do the job, or if he'll need at least 3.5 points, but it's possible that he'll be able to take the tiniest bit of luster off of Firouzja's month--but only the tiniest bit.
Here are Firouzja's last two games from the ETC and Ding's win in the first game of his match.
**UPDATE**
First, a correction. Contrary to the title in the post (since corrected), Ukraine won the ETC, not Russia.
Second, an update on the match between Ding Liren and Lu Shanglei. Above, I wasn't sure if 3/4 would be enough for Ding to surpass Alireza Firouzja on the rating list. Well, now I know. Game two of the match finished in a draw and cost Ding almost all his rating gains from his win in the first game, so Firouzja will finish the month at #2 unless Ding wins both games 3 and 4.