Today famous Belarusian commentator Konstantin "LENINIW" Sivko released a short interview with legendary Ukrainian player Ivan "Edward" Sukhariev on his Youtube channel.

The interview was recorded in the lobby of LanXESS arena during the IEM Cologne 2023 tournament.

When was the last time you were at such big tournaments?

I was at this same tournament last year as a spectator.

Tell us a little bit about the ESC team. How did you get there, how were you found? Was it your idea, was it someone else's idea? When did you agree to start from scratch?

Well, you know, man, I want to be very specific. I don't even know where to start, to be honest. Did you tell me before the interview that you wanted to know what happened in my life? Yeah, in 20-21.
In fact, even KHAN. It was like, you know, like trying to do something new in general in my career, I guess, basically. Because there's some gestalt that maybe hasn't been closed, left over from Nadia, from Ven Strike. Some kind of feeling that I'm just a fan of the game, you know? I just enjoy playing it. And yeah, and to tell you the truth, the process itself, when you build relationships within a team, when you build a team, and when you feel something develop about labor, you feel the labor, it's nice, it's comforting. I don't know, I guess those are the main motivations. And what happened when Khan fell apart, Khan fell apart on such a bad story. Turns out we didn't get paid our money. Basically, it's just like the scene, it's business as usual. There were also suspicions that the guys were once crooks and so on.

Didn't you know anything about it when you played there?

No, I didn't know. Then I was told that there was some kind of black list among the organizers, blah blah blah blah. I didn't know about it. The guys, of course, always swore to me that there was nothing like that and so on and so forth. This was the KHAN period, I was playing with Topa, kopacho. Former NAVI Junior players. Rage was the sniper. The fifth one I don't remember who it was.

What did you do after Khan?

After Khan, I was actually preoccupied for the most part, I guess, with my own personal life health. Maybe those kinds of things have been predominant in my life. Rebooting, yeah, I guess so.
After that, I was dealing with my own life, my own health. Rebooting. But on the DM I logged in regularly, something to play with, a scope change - it doesn't happen whether I need it or not. After leaving TIR-1, I started following the scene a lot. I enjoyed seeing the NAVI lineup build, I became a fan of theirs. I was waiting for them to win a major and for there to be some sort of era in S:GO. I was happy for the guys.

How did you end up in Europe tell your story, how did the war start for you?

How did I end up in Europe? February 2022, I had planned a trip to Portugal. I had tickets on February 7 and on the day of departure my wife and I were diagnosed with COVEID. Everything was canceled. By the 20th we recovered and I decided to go to Katowice. I left Kharkov by car on February 23. At one point I stopped for a rest. Then I decided to go to Kiev: to visit a surgeon and meet with friends.And on February 24 I wanted to go further. But something stopped me, I changed my mind and decided to go straight to the west of Ukraine. I was standing at 5 a.m. and then the war started. Until the 24th I did not believe that it would start. I thought that they would just establish total control over the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk, and other cities [in Ukraine] would not be affected. And I was scared to leave the country.

What did you do next?

Before my trip to Katowice, I didn't take any money or belongings with me. I had no thoughts of leaving the country altogether. At about 8:00 a.m., I pass Lviv. I have never seen such queues at gas stations. I crossed the border, ceh9 took me not through the main road, but through a detour. Arrived in Poland.Many thanks to ESL, they extended my hotel for a week. I didn't know what to do. A week passed and I decided to go with the guys from NAVI! To a bootcamp in Warsaw. Kinguin also helped me, gave me a room, a computer. I decided it was better not to go back to Ukraine. I wrote to Liquid, who announced the start of helping Ukrainians. I went to Holland and lived there for a year. And thanked them again. They had an old apartment, but they didn't use it.

You haven't spoken out about the war, why?

My position on the war. I do not express it in public, because I am not a blogger. I condemn Russia's aggression and of course I don't support it. So many people are dying. It's all horrible, any sane person would not support it all. No one understands why this is happening. It's just horrible.

Ivan went on to talk about his kick out of the NAVI Hall of Fame and his future plans:

[[NAVI| Hall of Fame inductee.] I didn't even know it existed. No one wrote me anything.[About ESC]. The bootcamp in Germany is coming up. I'm pleasantly surprised by the characters and skills of our players. It's cool to build the game together with the guys, analyze, progress. I get a high from it. It's hard on the TIR-3 stage, everything is different here.

Recall that Edward recently joined a German organization that has assembled an all-Ukrainian roster:

• Smash
• Edward
• bondik
• t3ns1on
• MUV
• Shockwave (coach).

It is still unclear when and at what tournament the roster will debut, so we just have to wait for new announcements from the German organization. If some of the roster players live in Ukraine, then even in the case of passage to LAN-tournaments, there may be difficulties with the departure on the background of the decree of the Ministry of Sports in case of participation of Russian or Belarusian players in this or that event.