Tournaments votekick Russian teams

Well, we guess that’s one way for Virtus.Pro to not have Visa issues anymore.

On Tuesday, BLAST announced that they were banning teams based out of Russia, a list that includes the likes of Virtus.pro, Team Spirit, and Gambit. Notably, it does not include NAVI despite them having three Russian players, because the ban is on teams based out of Russia and NAVI is based out of Ukraine.

Then, on Wednesday, ESL announced a similar but slightly different restriction, targeting organizations “with apparent ties to the Russian government, including individuals or organizations under alleged or confirmed EU sanctions related to the conflict,” noting that that presently applied to Gambit and VP.

VP’s owner, Alisher Usmanov, was sanctioned by the White House this week and had his Yacht seized by German authorities for his connections to Putin, while Gambit’s owners reportedly also have close connections to the Russian president.

All is not lost for the players on those teams, however; in their statement, ESL noted that they were willing to allow those lineups to play “under a neutral name, without representing their country, organization or their teams’ sponsors on their clothing or otherwise.”

Gambit has not released a statement since the bans.

As for VP, well, it might’ve been better if they didn’t release one.

It...is not necessarily what most would describe as a harsh condemnation of a brutal invasion, given it at one point describes TOs conducting a “witch hunt.” The statement does say “We do not support any war there is or ever was: In Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia or any other.”

That remark is also dampened by the next line, in which they declare that “forcing someone to take a public stand does not lead to peace, but instead it drives people further away from each other and fuels hatred.”

Perhaps the bigger problem for their public image right now isn’t being forced to make such a statement, it’s the fact that it took forcing for them to make a pretty unimpressive anti-war statement.

Simply tweeting “We do not support the war in Ukraine” would’ve probably been more affective. This tip is free, slide into DM for more.