NAVI CEO: "We are not going to work with players who live in Russia, but we are ready to help them with relocation"

Evgeny Zolotarev, who is the CEO of the Ukrainian esports organization NAVI, gave an interview to the foreign edition of The Washington Post, in which he shared the details of the future of the club's teams.

First of all, the CEO of NAVI spoke about how the organization is currently functioning.

Right now we can say that we are back on track. However, we can't do our job in the media because we can't do memes, we can't do promotions. We are trying to use our media to help our country, basically to inform our fans, including Russian fans, about what's going on. Therefore, I will not say that we are 100% engaged in esports work. Our main goal now is not to lose anyone, to keep paying employees - even if we have a couple of people who are currently in the army. We will continue to pay them because they protect our homeland as well as us.

Then Zolotarev spoke about the future of Russian players in NAVI.

We are not going to work with people who live in Russia and 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 happens on Russian television is nonsense. I mean they understand it because they spend a lot of time in Ukraine.

Obviously, our players understand this. However, there are legal problems. If you are Russian, it is now very difficult to even write a post to express your thoughts. I mean you can go to jail! However, we will not be able to work with players who will live there and pay taxes. Therefore, we are ready to help relocate players who do not share the policy of the Russian Federation.

In the end, the general director of the organization said that the club intends to disband several squads.

I believe that all of our main lineups will remain the same. We will definitely disband a couple of smaller disciplines, mostly mobile ones. We have some problems with "Dota 2" but it's not about political positions, political thoughts of our players or their nationality. It's more about the fact that Valve decided not to hold the second season of the DPC, while the third major will be held in the USA.

We are skipping the second season and the prospects for the third season are very doubtful due to visa problems that may arise due to the war. Therefore, we do not know what the prospects for "Dota 2" are in our region as a whole. I used to call our region "CIS" before, but I won't do it again.

But it's not about our composition; it's more about "Dota 2" in our region as a whole. We will try to keep as many disciplines and players as possible. As far as I know, most of our players are ready to move.

Recall that earlier the leadership of NAVI confirmed that they were ready to help players from Russia obtain Ukrainian citizenship. In addition, the club expressed the hope that the NAVI CS:GO roster will not be affected by the changes, while the Russian players will move to a country where the organization will hold a bootcamp or create a full-fledged office.