Passion UA bid farewell to Kane

The PGL Major Kraków-winning coach departs the organization whose lineup he put together and helped reach the Shanghai Major.

Passion UA have announced the departure of head coach Mikhaylo "⁠Kane⁠" Blagin, bringing an end to the Ukrainian skipper's 16-month tenure with the organization that he helped bring within touching distance of the Perfect World Shanghai Major top-16.

The 39-year-old facilitated Passion UA's entry into Counter-Strike in August 2023, trusted by Aresenal left-back Oleksandr Zinchenko to put together the first lineup for the organization he founded and invested in to help contribute to the growth of esports in Ukraine.

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Kane's experience leading pro100 and Virtus.pro in CS 1.6 and as the coach of Natus Vincere and the PGL Major Kraków-winning Gambit lineup proved crucial in building up a Ukrainian team full of young, untested rookies.

The team labored through a year's worth of online cups, leagues, and qualifiers, making a few deep runs but often exiting in the group stage or early rounds of playoffs.

They broke through towards the end of 2024 by beating Virtus.pro, Spirit, and Astralis in China to qualify for the Perfect World Shanghai Major Challengers Stage, where they went up 2-1 before missing out on the Legends Stage with narrow losses to GamerLegion and Wildcard.

They couldn't build on that success with Vsevolod "⁠s-chilla⁠" Shchurov stepping back from competition — citing burnout — and in-game leader Rodion "⁠fear⁠" Smyk departing for fnatic, with results in 2025 comprised largely of early exits in qualifiers and CCT events.

The situation only got worse when AWPer Dmytro "⁠jambo⁠" Semera, another key piece of Passion UA's Major run, also departed for fnatic in March. The team brought back s-chilla but couldn't rally to secure an Austin Major Europe MRQ spot, with our predicted April 7 ranking page leaving them a few spots shy of the cut-off.

Without Kane, Passion UA are left with:

Nikita "⁠jackasmo⁠" Skyba
Eduard "⁠zeRRoFIX⁠" Petrovskyi
Vladyslav "⁠Kvem⁠" Korol
Oleksii "⁠Topa⁠" Topchiienko
Vsevolod "⁠s-chilla⁠" Shchurov