Ukrainian professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player Ostap "0ni" Onistrat died while defending his homeland earlier this month, aged 21. The confirmation of his tragic death arrived mere weeks after a community-made CS:GO map attempted to give Russians another perspective on the war in Ukraine.The ongoing conflict has been causing immense damage to the Eastern European country ever since Russia invaded it in February 2022. Besides resulting in tens of thousands of casualties, the hostilities have so far created millions of Ukraine war refugees in need of housing. Onistrat enlisted to defend his country in mid-2022 and has served in the 68th Jaeger brigade of the Ukrainian land forces as a drone operator over the past year.Onistrat was killed by enemy shrapnel in the Donetsk town of Vuhledar on June 3, as revealed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense on social media two days later. Vuhledar has been a front in the ongoing war since late October 2022, with the hostilities in the town so far claiming the lives of over 6,000 military personnel, according to the belligerents' official estimates. The report of Onistrat's death prompted hundreds of responses expressing condolences to his family and calling for an immediate end to the ghastly conflict. One of them came from Ukrainian Counter-Strike: Global Offensive coach and analyst Sergey "LMBT" Bezhanov, who called Onistrat a hero for protecting his homeland and "everyone [sic] of us."
Onistrat's father Andriy—who volunteered for the Ukrainian military two days after his son did in mid-2022—has recently taken to Facebook to reveal that Ostap celebrated his first year of service two days before he was killed in action. He was eager to destroy a tank on his anniversary and seemed annoyed when that didn't work out, as per that account. The heartbroken father wrote that "time has stood still" after his death.
Onistrat's last professional CS:GO match took place in April 2021, just over a year before he enlisted in the military. He played for the Ukrainian team Libertatem in the 2021 Zuel Championship, where they finished second following a 0-2 loss to Baza in the final, according to CS:GO eSports tracker HLTV. Many players reacting to the news of Onistrat's death criticized Valve for continuing to allow Russian players to participate in the game's events while their country keeps wreaking havoc across Ukraine. The final Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship that took place last month imposed no country-specific restrictions on its participants.
And while the hit shooter is bound to become less relevant on the eSports scene following the full-fledged release of the currently beta-bound Counter-Strike 2, some fans have long been calling for Valve to ban Russian players from participating in all of its official game events while the war in Ukraine is ongoing. Whether the company could actually do so is dubious, not least because even many traditional sports organizations with much larger audiences like the ATP have so far abstained from preventing Russian teams and athletes from competing in their events, the most notable exceptions being FIFA and UEFA.