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I was initially confused because blat (блат,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blat_(favors)) sounds, to my non-slavic-speaking-ear very close to bylad (блядь, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_profanity#Bly%C3%A1d'), and I thought "even the Russians wouldn't be that cynically direct about it, right?"

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They may sound somewhat similar, but apparently have unrelated origins. блат is borrowed from Yiddish, while блядь has a Slavic root.

That said, they do sound less similar to someone who has learned a Slavic language. We learn to distinguish pairs of sounds that differ in our language. English doesn't have a lot of words with a "ya" sound, and so to us "я"and "а" are easy to confuse. It is easy to confuse "d" and "t". But the easier to hear distinction is a hard sign т versus the soft sign on дь. But hard versus soft isn't even a concept in English, so you're not listening for it.

I can confirm those words do not in fact sound very close. They're not etymologically related either, and to a fluent Russian speaker they don't sound particularly similar.

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