Virtus.pro CSGO team to play in ESL Pro League 15 as \u2018Outsiders\u2019 Jo\u00e3o Ferreira\/DexertoVirtus.pro\u2019s CS:GO team will compete in ESL Pro League 15 under the tag \u2018Outsiders\u2019 following ESL\u2019s ban of organizations with ties to the Russian government, Dexerto has confirmed. The CIS team will compete under a neutral name after ESL elected to impose a ban on all \u201corganizations with apparent ties to the Russian government\u201d following the Kremlin\u2019s decision to invade Ukraine on February 24. Virtus.pro are one of the two Russian-based organizations that ESL believes have ties to the Kremlin. Russian state-run insurance company Sogaz has a controlling stake in Virtus.pro\u2019s ownership group VK, and is one of the companies included on the European Union\u2019s sanctions list imposed on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine. Despite this, Virtus.pro claimed that they were \u201cnot connected\u201d to the Russian government, adding that they had provided ESL with documentation to this effect. The Russian organization showed their displeasure with ESL\u2019s decision, which they described as \u201ca prime example of \u2018the cancel culture.\u201d Still, Virtus.pro stressed they would not stand in the way of the players competing in the tournament under a different tag if they so wished. Virtus.pro\u2019s CS:GO team has two players from both Russia and Kazakhstan, and one from Latvia. In a recent interview with Sportacentrs, Mareks \u2018YEKINDAR\u2019 Ga\u013cinskis, the Latvian player, said that the future was \u201cuncertain\u201d as travel restrictions and tournament sanctions could affect his team. Gambit, the other organization identified by ESL as having ties to the Russian government, have not yet stated whether their team will compete in ESL Pro League 15, which begins on March 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Virtus.pro CSGO team to play in ESL Pro League 15 as \u2018Outsiders\u2019 Jo\u00e3o Ferreira\/DexertoVirtus.pro\u2019s CS:GO team will compete in ESL Pro League 15 under the tag \u2018Outsiders\u2019 following ESL\u2019s ban of organizations with ties to the Russian government, Dexerto has confirmed. The CIS team will compete under a neutral name after ESL elected to impose […]<\/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-39314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39314","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=39314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}