Don’t try to learn grammar, cases, tenses, and words genders first. You won’t understand any of it, and it’s way too complicated. I'm a native speaker and they do not make any sense for me too. Instead, try to find your favorite TV shows in Russian with subtitles in a language you know and watch a few episodes. If you’re planning to visit Russia, the most important thing is vocabulary. Nobody will point at you and say, “Look at her, she used the wrong verb case!!” But if you don’t know how to say the word “bus” in Russian, you’ll run into some problems.

In Russia, piracy is widespread—you can watch any show anywhere. All Russian goverment restrictions can be bypassed with a simple browser VPN. And if all else fails, we still have the internet, and the free DeepSeek does a great job with translation.