Russia’s Soldiers Sabotaging the Russian Army

And getting huge payouts for doing so

B Kean
5 min readAug 18, 2022

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Russian troops in Ukraine get paid $50,000, in rubles, if they get wounded in the war.

The promise of such a payday is a gaping hole and one that will lead to countless instances of fraud. All it takes is one perfectly placed bullet for minimizing damage, and Private Sergey Ivanov is on his way back home with a big, and guaranteed payout — surely after tons of paperwork and much later — but a payout nonetheless.

It is Russia’s love for chess that will ultimately bring down the Russian army. Few people in the world play the ancient game as well as they do. Having lived there for nearly 30 years, I left when the war started, I had the pleasure to watch and even play a lot of chess.

I recall how an Australian friend of mine, who was a very strong player, sat to play a Russian guy who said he wasn’t very good. Before they started, the Russian kid smoked a hand-rolled cigarette laced with a lot of hash. He could barely keep his eyes open and crushed my Australian friend in 11 moves.

“I never saw such a strategy like that before,” was all he kept saying.

Russians are probably the best in the world at dissecting defenses. They use the positive creative energy of their opponent against…

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B Kean

The past holds the answers to today’s problems. “Be curious, not judgmental,” at least until you have all the facts. Think and stop watching cable news.