Several CS:GO teams may have difficulty participating in European RMR tournaments due to the increasingly complicated visa process. In particular, 1WIN, Aurora, K23 and Benched Heroes faced such difficulties.
On September 9, the European Commission announced new rules for considering applications for short-term visas from Russian citizens who would like to visit one of the EU countries. These documents, in particular, mention that consulates can “give lower priority to non-essential travel,” extend the processing time for an application from 15 to 45 days, and also request additional documentation.
As a result, K23, 1WIN and Aurora had difficulty obtaining the visas required to travel to Malta in a timely manner. It is mentioned that only two players with 1WIN have visas (lollipop21k and flamie), and deko recently mentioned that his chances of getting a visa can be estimated as “fifty-fifty.” Aurora has still not received visas for the manager, coach and one of the players.
Owen “smooya” Butterfield from the multinational team Benched Heroes recently mentioned that he is not yet sure what the final lineup will be: Russian roster member Evgeniy “Aunkere” Karjat also risks missing the competition due to lack of a visa.
According to ESL rules, teams can only make one substitution, which means that those teams where two or more participants have problems will have to leave the tournament.
