How a Grain Trader Became Russia's Most Wanted Man

The man who turned the tide of the war in Ukraine’s favor was not a soldier. He was a grain trader. And it’s precisely because he wasn’t part of the system that he was able to reshape it to fight back.

Robert Brovdi is one of the most wanted men in Russia. I’m writing about him because of what he said about why they’re succeeding.

He said it comes down to his training in mathematics and his years as first violinist in a folk orchestra. Attaching survival and military operations to “collective intelligence” isn’t something you find in history books.

His first drone purchase was for his kids, back when he was still a businessman. Then he became a soldier, and the inability to see the men trying to kill him and his unit drove him to send up that same civilian drone. First it watched. Then it guided artillery. Then it guided intelligence. Then it guided weapons. A small group became a system. That system became a force. And the grain trader became commander of Ukraine’s unmanned systems forces.

Listen to how he ties his upbringing in maths and music to what he built:

What is the foundation of our success? Mathematics.

I am deeply grateful. From my school days, for my first teacher. From first grade, she created a competition. That magical, competitive kick up the arse. And she taught me to handle numbers. Because eventually, numbers are the foundation of everything. Two plus two opens unlimited possibilities for planning and analysis.

For setting goals and tasks. Controlling their execution, planning the next stage.

And for doing that not in a silo, but as a team, I thank my parents. Without asking whether I wanted to or not, they made me go to music school. They did it because children who had free time spent it in basements. And basements had consequences: smoking, drinking, and so on.

So instead of letting me sit in basements, they sent me to music school.

Music school, through my own obstinance, was a constant struggle after the first three days. I had to do something I did not enjoy.

But I was an obedient only child, under my parents’ authority and supervision. So I had to grind through music school for seven years.

And here is the point: did I simply study alone for seven years?

No.

I was placed in an orchestra of folk instruments, full of people of different ages, playing different instruments.

And because I played a little better, or perhaps by accident, they gave me the solo part.

Other members could miss rehearsals and nobody would ever notice.

But I was the first violin of the folk orchestra. Without me, neither rehearsal nor concert could happen.

From childhood, that role drilled one idea into my head: whether a hundred instruments come together in harmony depends on you. And if they don’t, the whole thing falls apart. And we cannot let it fall apart. We have to win.

So, mathematics and collective intelligence. Not the kind formed inside a military education. I’m not against military education. My point is that officers are trained within a fixed range of knowledge, over a fixed period of time. Nothing beyond it.

But when war forced people from different professions, experience, and fields of knowledge together in 2022, that collective intelligence produced faster planning, better solutions, better ways to secure resources, and assembled every component until the machine was complete and began moving.

Those were competitive advantages created under the pressure of war. Nobody in my world had planned for them, even at the start of the 2020s.

This isn’t a war story. It’s a pattern.

Steve Jobs used to tell it about himself: dropping into a calligraphy class at Reed College with no career use for it, purely because it pulled at him. Years later, designing the first Macintosh, that one useless class became the reason personal computers got real typography. He didn’t plan it. He couldn’t have said why at the time.

Brovdi didn’t plan for a maths education and a seat in a folk orchestra to become the operating system for a drone force either.

The mental model underneath both: work at the intersection of what pulls your interest and what you’re actually talented at, even when no one, least of all you, can say why yet. You’re not building a résumé. You’re building a toolkit whose use you can’t see yet.

I have my own version of this.

In business school, I wanted a seat on the Barcelona exchange, not for any strategic reason, just pure interest in the city and the language. Everyone wanted it. The seats were limited, and I didn’t win one. So I went to the people who made the decision and asked what it would take to get it the following year. Then I spent that summer studying Spanish in Mexico.

The next year, I was one of three people chosen to go to ESADE, one of the most prestigious business schools in the world.

I didn’t know it then. But I believe that’s what shaped me: it’s where I learned that if I really want something, I can go get it.

Three different people. Three different decades. Same operating principle: follow the interest before you know what it’s for. The knowing comes later, if it comes at all.

So think about the success you've had, no matter how small. Can you trace it back to some interest you followed long before you understood why?

Harsh

I share my learnings as a business builder, daily on my WhatsApp Community and LinkedIn, and weekly on my Sunday Email.