How Russian works

The short version

• The alphabet is not the problem. Thirty-three letters, mostly regular, readable in a week. Treating it as the hard part delays meeting the hard part.
• You never have to type Cyrillic here. Every typed answer accepts Latin transliteration, because a keyboard test is not a Russian test.
• The six cases replace the articles and word order English needs. They are finite, patterned, and yield to drilling.
• Verb aspect is the real difficulty, and it takes years rather than months. Start noticing it on day one.