The CS:GO Blast tournament banned Russian Teams from all its events, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, BLAST Premier has banned all Russian Teams for the foreseeable future. The organization has also decided to cancel the CIS qualifying, preventing teams from the CIS region from participating in the event.
Russian Teams banned from CS:GO Blast tournament
In a statement on Twitter, the organizers stated that all Russian teams that were/will be invited to the event were blocked, and that they did not prevent Russian players from other teams from entering the tournament.
Russian teams especially play an important role in the game CS: GO. Two of the current top six teams in CS:GO in particular are based in Russia: Gambit Esports and Virtus.pro. After they were blocked from participating in the tournament, a serious discussion also broke out on Twitter. Those who said that the decision was political argued that this should not be involved in the game world.
On the other hand, Navi announced in a statement that they have concluded their sponsorship agreement with the Russian company ESForce Holding. Although Navi has three Ukrainians and three Russian players, it has not been blocked from tournaments as the team’s headquarters are located in Ukraine.
Despite this, they explained in their statement that while thousands of people were leaving their homes and others were fighting, they were also in shelters and in this situation they had no opportunity to engage in eSports. They also announced that they have cut off their relations not only with ESForce Holding, but also with all other Russian companies with which they have business partnerships.
— NAVI (@natusvincere) March 1, 2022