G2 HooXi responds to IEM Katowice controversy over Ukraine flag Helena Kristiansson\/ESLG2 Esports captain Rasmus \u2018HooXi\u2019 Nielsen has provided an explanation for his team\u2019s refusal to take a picture with a fan holding up a Ukrainian flag at IEM Katowice. G2\u2019s CS:GO team became the target of criticism on social media on February 13 after it was revealed that the players had refused to take a picture next to a Ukrainian flag that had been brought by Denys \u2018d3str0\u2019 Zabarnyi, a Ukrainian CS:GO and Valorant caster, during a signing session with fans. The incident came just two months after G2\u2019s team made headlines for taking a picture with a fan holding up a Russian flag during the BLAST Premier World Final, in Abu Dhabi. The episode drew harsh criticism, including from NAVI star Oleksandr \u2018s1mple\u2019 Kostyliev, who said he did not understand why the team had allowed the photo to be taken. This prompted a reaction from Julius Yl\u00e4nne, G2\u2019s Head of Esports, who explained that the photo was taken before the players realized that the fan was holding up a Russian flag. He insisted that it did not mean the players supported Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. G2 HooXi responds to controversy In a Twitlonger post, HooXi shared his side of the Katowice story and explained that the team refused to take a picture next to a Ukrainian flag because of the lessons learned from the earlier incident in Abu Dhabi. \u201cThis time being at a signing session and having learned from the first episode, we were a bit more aware and I took the decision to not take any chances with flags or any other kind of symbols that could indicate a political opinion,\u201d HooXi said. \u201cI politely told him the situation and told him he could get a picture without the flag if he so desired. \u201cWe had a lot of people waiting in line so I helped him by placing the flag on a desk right next to us while taking the photo. I didn\u2019t think much of it and I still don\u2019t think anyone did anything wrong in the situation. Now posting it after in the fashion it was done, trying to put me and my teammates in a bad light once again is a different story.\u201d HooXi also urged the esports community to \u201cstop going after\u201d Russians and Ukrainians who are seen taking pictures together at events. This came after his teammate Ilya \u2018m0NESY\u2019 Osipov, who is Russian, took a picture next to Valeriy \u2018b1t\u2019 Vakhovskiy, a Ukrainian player for NAVI. m0NESY and b1t played together on NAVI Academy and became close friends, but that did not stop the Ukrainian player from becoming the target of much ire on social media. \u201cThey have nothing to do with what\u2019s going on and if anything I think it shows faith in humanity that we can see beyond that as normal human beings and still have a good relationship,\u201d HooXi said. G2\u2019s CS:GO team recently reached the No.1 spot in the world rankings after winning IEM Katowice \u2014 their second international title in the space of two months. Later this week, the team will compete in the closed qualifier for the Europe RMR, the qualifying event for the BLAST.tv Paris Major.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
G2 HooXi responds to IEM Katowice controversy over Ukraine flag Helena Kristiansson\/ESLG2 Esports captain Rasmus \u2018HooXi\u2019 Nielsen has provided an explanation for his team\u2019s refusal to take a picture with a fan holding up a Ukrainian flag at IEM Katowice. G2\u2019s CS:GO team became the target of criticism on social media on February 13 after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}