Larry Brooks of the New York Post has reported that New York Ranger‘s star forward Artemi Panarin is taking a leave of absence from the team in wake of a politically motivated article from Russia. The article states that his former Vityaz head coach alleges that the ex-forward of the Moscow Region club beat an 18-year-old girl in Riga, Latvia in 2011.
The backlash seems to have come from a July 2019 interview with the Vsemu Golovin YouTube channel and eviscerated Putin. It was a bombshell interview in which the 2020 Hart trophy finalist – barefoot in his living room in Saint Petersburg – criticized Putin’s entire regime.