Your mistake is obvious.
And Yes, You're correct about some things. Poker becomes more and more popular in Russia and post-Soviet countries, they even have their own poker rooms and they had, still have and getting new poker training sites every year, where mathematical part of the game is explained very well, together with psychological and all other points of views. Also since education at all levels is free or almost free in these countries, it's no wonder that they have top scientists/programmers/hackers and their students win gold medals at maths/physics/programming world championships each year.
LOL if we'll compare average Russian player to average Brasilian player, for example... Majority of Russians don't have Atlantic ocean with beaches nearby and Samba Carnivals, during cold winters they prefer to solve puzzles, and play intellectual table games at home. Another example -If we'll compare average German player to average American, we'll see that in a $2 MTT German player will fold JKs to a 50% stack all-in, just because it's a JK, while American player will always call, just because it's just 2dollars. Don't call me any kind of poker racist, I'm playing approx 10 different poker sites for really long time and see these cultural differences in the game... that's why some poker sites like party and acr are upgrading to hiding the location and flag info, and even allow to change the nicknames now.
Together with said above, I must mention that my native language is Russian and I live in ex Soviet Republic, but I also know several more languages and after browsing different poker communities in several different languages I must say that poker schools are completely different in many countries. Even British - American poker is different, however they're both in the English poker "zone"... Obvious example is "10 premium hands chart" listed here at CardsChat, Russians think different, they would have a good laugh by looking at these "Premiums" here.
What you've described is correct, and your mistake is obvious and simple. Stealing-shmealing, 10-20-30 BBs = simply forget about such BS in HU or 3-way games
) Specially if it's a short stacked game with fast blinds that can be launched several times per minute... If it's $10 buy-in game, then think about your stack as a single $10 bet, instead of thinking about it as a 10-20-30BB chip stack. You're showing to Russian reg. player your weaknesses during first blind levels. His position is always strong, it's like he's saying "Ok, I got the cards, I bet $10, let's see who will win", while you're trying to say "maybe I have a hand, let's see a flop, then I'll decide if it's worth to bluff or to bet\call with good outs and so on". So basically you're saying "I'm not sure, I want to be sure when I'll see the flop, maybe I'll bet $1.5 instead of betting whole $10"... You know what? You're losing respect points in your opponents eyes when you're doing this. Russian regulars know perfectly that any two cards can win, but some cards win more often. They also know that online poker is a rake generating system, it's not a real life poker, where tells, reads, and deep thinking have value. In online poker, specially in HU SNGs value comes from the number of games, all they have to do is to pick "the dealer" side and play against gamblers, it's like you're playing against roulette, and you have 18 red numbers on your side, while he has 18 blacks plus one green, in the long run he will always win, all he has to do is to keep playing against such "gamblers" who split their $10 bet into 30bb stack and play HU SNG poker like if it's the final table of 5 day WSOP tourney, "as seen on TV" LOL.
Nash, GTO or ABC... it's all true and it's all lie at the same time, Russian poker sites are teaching them to switch gears against same opponents...
P.S. Braslian poker school, together with poker media in Brasil are drawing same picture for all types of games, you will find that average brasilian player is playing MTT for several hours the same way like if it's a Hyper-Turbo short stacked HU SNG... A7 = Preflop ALL-IN, Because it's Ace, and doesn't matter if there was a 3bet infront of him from a very tight player, he simply accepts the fact of maximum loss of his buy-in in this current hand and does not cares about time spent, ICM and other factors, he's providing you with 2 simple choices = call or fold. That's what the rest of the world doesn't really like about Brasilian players, cause somwetimes they beat your pocket kings with trash like A8os, and our brain will keep such bad beats for much longer time, than normal vice-versa wins, when your best pre-flop hands beats opponents garbage.
Regs and Pros have no nationality, players of the top level almost equally understand the game, What I've said above was about average players... You might be surprised that premium hands in China include 78s, not only because 8 is the lucky number, but also because it's middle of the range, and such cards have good post-flop value for straigh-flush-set-2pairs together with being less predictable for traditional western poker players...