kUcheR joins Empire

Alongside longtime teammate Kirill "⁠ANGE1⁠" Karasiow, Emil "⁠kUcheR⁠" Akhundov was the longest standing member of the HellRaisers team until the 27-year-old Ukrainian player (with previous stints on the likes of Virtus.pro and Astana Dragons in the past) recently decided to depart from the organisation altogether.

It has now been announced that Team Empire, who signed the Rebels team in late January that were runners-up at the CIS Minor and who featured a CIS region mix of mostly up-and-coming players, is the newfound berth for kUcheR as the player will step into the active five man lineup effective immediately.

Going out in kUcheR's stead is Ukrainian and eighteen year old Ilya "⁠fix⁠" Golovko. The reason for the roster change is related to the team's apparent worsening of results lately, with a few losses in the past few days having particularly bleak scorelines.

An approximately translated statement from the team's manager Maxim "nirvana_sf" Zalilov sheds some light on the change:

"Today, we have had to make a substitution. We will be swapping out Ilya [fix] - a great player, and a fine, decent man - since, unfortunately, our results have not progressed recently. Various methods that we used did not help. We was decided to strengthen the structure of the team with an experienced player, Emil [kUcheR]. I want to say many thanks to Ilya for everything he has done for us and I wish him luck in the future," Zalilov said.

Empire's roster is now:

Roman "⁠CyberFocus⁠" Dergach
Sergey "⁠spaz⁠" Skrypchik
Alexander "⁠spiker⁠" Ivanov
Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov
Emil "⁠kUcheR⁠" Akhundov

 Maxim "nirvana_sf" Zalilov

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter