17 Year Old Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko Revealed as Carry for Virtus.Pro Dota 2
A fresh face enters the CIS Dota 2 pro scene.
Virtus.pro (VP) has announced the addition of Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko as the new position one player for its Dota 2 roster. The organization has also confirmed an earlier report about its potential roster changes and has benched Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko and Vitaly “Save-” Melnik while stating that the team’s position four player will also be revealed shortly. In an official statement, Sergey Glamazda, the CEO of Virtus.pro, said that they can’t put personal goals before professional ones, and therefore arrived at a mutual decision to move Nightfall and Save- to the inactive roster.
Who is VP Dota2’s new carry player Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko?
Pure is a 17 year old Dota 2 player whose hometown is Vladivostok. He has just finished high school and is currently studying at Moscow university. He heard about Dota in 2013 and used to watch his older brother play, until he finally picked up the game himself in around 2017 or 2018. His nickname “Pure” is a Google Translation of a song name created by a Russian rapper called Scriptonite.
I’m delighted to have a chance to play for Virtus.pro. The guys here are highly skilled and easygoing. All players are good at what they do, our games are really fun to play. We are about to meet in person at the bootcamp and start training to show our best in the upcoming DPC season.Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko, Carry - Virtus.pro Dota 2
VP Dota admits that Pure wasn’t the team’s first option for the position one role. His biggest achievements thus far have been ranking 9th on the EU leaderboard with an MMR of 11,150, and a second place finish in a tournament held in by the Russian Esports Federation called Governor of Zabaykalsky Krai’s Cup. This 2nd place finish motivated Pure to go pro in Dota 2. He didn’t know anyone in Virtus Pro and was reached out to by the team’s coach, Anatoliy “boolk” Ivanov who asked Pure to add him to his friend list. Through this, boolk checked Pure’s replays who then happened to play a pub match with Danil “gpk” Skutin - Virtus Pro’s position two player. This led to him being invited to the tryouts for the team, where he claims that he wasn’t nervous while and had good chemistry with them right from the start.
On the first day of his test games with VP Dota 2, Pure played Riki with Maelstrom, twice! Resourcefulness and ingenuity are his self proclaimed strengths, along with the ability to play unconventional carry heroes like Troll and Razor.
His Dota 2 identity remains somewhat of a mystery since he claims to have a private online profile and only played in local Russian tournaments, mostly in his hometown Vladivostok or in nearby cities. His most played hero is Morphling but he doesn’t have any signature heroes. He sees himself as a player with a diverse hero pool and has lately been playing a lot of Razor and Faceless Void.
Virtus Pro's CEO Sergey Glamazda speaks about Dota 2 Roster Shuffle
Virtus.pro had a solid run at TI10, securing a 4th-5th finish along with $1.4M USD in prize money. However the CEO Sergey Glamazda stated that the roster shuffle was a result of the team not being able to work out their issues.
Not everyone in the team was on the same page. Some players believed that we could not work out our issues and succeed in the current roster. Egor and Vitaly are highly skilled players and natural leaders. They were the founders of the VP.Prodigy roster that later became our main one. We’ve had our ups and downs in the last two years and I want to say thank you to the guys for this amazing journey we had together. Our goal remains the same: winning The International. It can't be done without constantly improving things and becoming a better team than we were a year before. We can’t put personal goals before professional ones, so it was our mutual decision to move Nightfall and Save- to the inactive roster.Sergey Glamazda, CEO, Virtus.pro
The current Virtus Pro Dota 2 roster is as follows:
Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko - Position 1
Danil “gpk” Skutin - Position 2
Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin - Position 3
TBA - Position 4
Illias “Kingslayer” Ganeev - Position 5
Anatoliy “boolk” Ivanov - Coach
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