In 1999, he was a member of the Ukrainian national youth team, which won the Under-16
Chess Olympiad in
Artek, Ukraine. In 2007 Eljanov won the B group of the
Corus Chess Tournament in
Wijk aan Zee, the
Netherlands with a score of 9/13 points. This result enabled him to qualify for the
category 20 tournament Corus A group of 2008. In the latter he scored 5/13 points. He won the 2009 Bosna Chess Tournament (
pl), a six-player double
round-robin tournament in
Sarajevo, with a score of 7/10 points. In the same year, Eljanov played in the GM
Rapid event of the
Richard Riordan Chess Festival at the
18th Maccabiah Games. In May 2010, he won the
Astrakhan stage of
FIDE Grand Prix 2008–2010 scoring 8/13. In August 2010, he won the
Politiken Cup in
Copenhagen. In the September 2010
FIDE World Rankings Eljanov had a rating of 2761, making him number 1 in Ukraine and number 6 in the world. In February 2012, he tied for 1st–3rd with
Mateusz Bartel and
Anton Korobov in the 11th
Aeroflot Open. In February 2013, Eljanov took first place on tiebreak in the strong
Reykjavik Open. Later that year, in September, he won the 14th
Anatoly Karpov International Tournament (
pl), a
category 18 round-robin event in
Poikovsky, Russia. In the following month he won another strong open tournament, the
Chigorin Memorial. In April 2014, he won the B tournament of the
Gashimov Memorial in
Şəmkir, Azerbaijan. In the
FIDE World Cup 2015, Eljanov defeated
Rinat Jumabayev,
Alexander Ipatov,
Alexander Grischuk,
Dmitry Jakovenko and
Hikaru Nakamura to reach the semifinals. He was then defeated in rapid tiebreaks by the eventual winner,
Sergey Karjakin. This result enabled Eljanov to qualify to play in the
FIDE Grand Prix series 2017. In 2016, he won the Chess.com Isle of Man International tournament in
Douglas edging out
Fabiano Caruana on tiebreak after both scored 7½/9 points. In July 2021, he won the 48th International Dortmund Schachtage Deutschland Grand Prix, scoring 6/9. ==Personal life==