Maelstorm commented on the floor dance during the Russian-language broadcast of The International 2026

I’ll state my position. First, I’ll explain why I didn’t participate in this from the start. Well, maybe there were other reasons, or maybe not. But I’ll put it this way: I didn’t participate for one simple reason.

I had surgery two weeks ago. I simply can’t do anything like that. That’s the first thing. Second, it’s not that I really wanted to—it’s just that, to be honest, I didn’t really get the joke. I remember a prank that took place at the Paragon studio, for example, about half a year ago, when—remember—the context was that even if we had the girls analyze it, you’d still be unhappy, which Santa pushed through. So we actually had Nastya, Dasha, Belka, and Yulia—who wasn’t working with us yet at the time—sit down to do it.

But at least they provided some context there, and it was, well, done in a grotesque way. I mean, the girls were wearing these, damn, outfits. Well, ultra-mega-sexy outfits, let’s put it that way. And it was really eye-catching. But, by the way, I didn’t quite get it—you know what? I didn’t really understand why there wasn’t much of a fuss back then, even though the girls were wearing some insanely hot outfits, and now, well, maybe I’m just—I don’t know—looking at the world a little differently. It’s just that what happened today, I wouldn’t exactly call it lewd, or even sexy.

It looked like... well, I don’t know, like, damn, they set up a camera in the gym, and there were just people working out in some kind of workout clothes—some without them. In my opinion, it wasn’t vulgar, lewd, or particularly sexualized. In my opinion, it was just boring. That was the biggest downside to the whole thing. Because when I turned it on, I watched the whole thing, and it was, well, just a bit of a drag. They kept doing the same movement over and over. She would’ve been better off coming out to “You Can Leave Your Hat On” and doing some kind of powerful twist than 10 identical turns. Anyway, my only major complaint about that moment is that it was just boring. Well, they didn’t pull it off.

The segment before that, where Yulia was picking out outfits for the characters in Dota, was ten times more interesting. It was way more engaging to watch. As for the rest, I’m just not really… I just didn’t even understand why there was such a big fuss. Everyone went and took screenshots, discussing it. Well, only the laziest people didn’t write about it. Although, as far as I’m concerned, it definitely wasn’t worth it. I mean, it seems to me that viewers were supposed to ignore what was happening because it was just some boring nonsense. But it turned out to be the exact opposite. Everyone has their own opinion. That’s pretty much it.