Niku on NAVI Junior qualifying for The International 2025

NAVI Junior’s midlaner Artem Niku Bachkur shared his thoughts in a post-match interview after the team secured a spot at The International 2025. He reflected on the series against OG, the team’s strengths, and the current meta.

Niku explained why the team preferred picking Doom as a carry and why Sven has become less viable.

We just had good results with Doom carry. He’s a strong hero, it works. We even picked him first phase. Sven worked well for us at Riyadh, but then Terrorblade started showing up more, and he counters Sven. Basically, the meta figured out how to counter Sven, so teams stopped picking him as much

He also commented on losing the first game in the deciding qualifier series for TI14, attributing it to draft experiments.

Yeah, in the first one we just lost the draft completely, straight up. It always happens — the first game is rough, or we just need to warm up and drain their emotions. Then in game 2 and 3 we draft properly and play our game

There was also a bit of irony toward Tamir Daze Tokpanov, a former teammate of Bachkur’s. According to Niku, he still makes the same mistakes as before.

He used to feed a lot when he played with us. I saw him step into mid for a creep wave at level 5, so I went to kill him and realized — yeah, he used to do the same thing with us. Always stepping into mid for the wave and feeding it to someone else. I just killed him easy

Artem also spoke about the team’s status and his attitude toward the tag. He said it doesn't matter to him what name they play under — results are what count.

I don’t know. I don’t care what tag we play under. NAVI, NAVI Junior — doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t change anything

Earlier, CyberScore.live reported that NAVI Junior had qualified for Riyadh Masters 2025.