Teams from the Russian region have been barred from entering the tournament for the foreseeable future.
BLAST Premier have decided to stop rolling out invites to the teams based in Russia amid the building tensions due to the ongoing Ukraine-Russian conflict, the tournament organizer announced today in their Twitter handle. This decision has been plotted for the foreseeable future where tournaments will miss out on notable teams like Virtus.pro and Gambit.
In addition, the CIS qualifier has also been called off following this decision which were to determine teams participating at the BLAST Spring Showdown where Virtus.pro, Entropiq, K23, and forZe had to feature in the qualifier. This also does mean that the qualifier for WePlay CIS Masters Spring also has been affected and won’t be played until there’s clarity on the current political situation.
HLTV.org reached out to the organizer who further cleared the air upon the participation of Natus Vincere since the team fields a mixed Russian-Ukrainian lineup and would be allowed to feature in the tournaments as their HQ is located in Ukraine.
Due to the conflict in Ukraine, no Russian-based team will be invited to play in our events for the foreseeable future.
Our CIS Qualifier has now also been canceled. We are sorry to the fans and players from the CIS region for this decision, but we do not think this is appropriate that this event goes ahead, at this time.
Gaming and esports unite people from all races, countries, and beliefs. We hope the situation on the world stage reflects this as soon as possible.
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