NAVI CEO: "We are not going to work with people who live in Russia"

The CEO of NAVI Evgeniy Zolotarev in an interview to the Washington Post said that his club will no longer work with players who continue to live in Russia amid the hostilities taking place in Ukraine. The head also expressed his hope that the CS:GO roster will not be changed, as a result of its Russian members moving out of their country.

We are not going to work with people who live in Russia and who pay taxes to the Russian Federation. We have a lot of Russians who have played for NAVI for years, and they understand that everything that is happening on Russian TV is bullshit. I mean, they understand that because they spend a lot of time in Ukraine. They boot camp here. They know us. <...> Obviously, our players, they understand that. However, there are legislative issues. If you’re Russian, it is super difficult to even have a post right now to express your thoughts or the attitude to this war. I mean, you can be put in prison! However, we won’t be able to work with players who will live there and will pay taxes there. So, we are ready to help relocate players who don’t share the Russian Federation’s politics.

I do believe all of our major rosters will remain the same. We will definitely disband a couple smaller disciplines, mostly mobile. We do have some issues with Dota 2, but it’s not about political positions, or the political thoughts of our players or their nationalities. <...> We hope that we are going to keep CS:GO roster and that the Russia-based players are going to relocate.

Earlier, NAVI’s COO Aleksey "xaoc" Kucherov stated that some players from their CS:GO lineup were thinking about a possible change of citizenship, which will allow them to continue playing at top tournaments. Natus Vincere’s CS:GO team features three Russian citizens: Kirill "Boombl4" Mikhailov, Denis "electroNic" Sharipov and Ilya "Perfecto" Zalutskiy.

Origin: www.washingtonpost.com