Russian DOTA 2 Player Dumped Over Alleged In-Game Support Of Ukraine Invasion

https://kotaku.com/russia-dota-2-valve-esports-ukraine-invasion-war-virtus [login to see]
An otherwise unremarkable (at least for the wider public) weekend of DOTA 2 action got a lot more controversial on Saturday when Virtus.pro’s Ivan ‘Pure’ Moskalenko was caught allegedly drawing a symbol of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the in-game minimap.

As Yahoo first reported, during a qualifier for the ESL One Stockholm Major, Pure could be seen drawing the letter “Z” on the map. That letter, seen painted on Russian military hardware during the first weeks of the attack, has grown to become a symbol of support among Russian people for the actions of their armed forces and president Vladimir Putin.

(If you want to read more on the mystery of the symbol and how it has blown up, The Guardian has a rundown on some of the theories of its origin, which are murky since there’s no “Z” in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet”)

You can see Pure draw the “Z” in the top-left corner of the map in the video below, before he pauses and starts to cross it out. His teammates, drawing in different colours, can also be seen quickly trying to draw over the letter.