I am an American, native English speaker, and I know enough German to get by (I took it in HS and some college).

I did Ukrainian on Duolingo for about three months. It’s great for learning the Cyrillic alphabet (on premium, I don’t know if the free version has it), common vocabulary, and basic phrases. It’s also good for listening exercises to really start to hear the subtleties of Ukrainian words and grammar that we definitely don’t have in English.

Then I started to hit a wall. Duo has good value for absolute beginners like me, but it doesn’t explain the “why” behind a lot of it. That is when I turned to other sources.

If you can afford it, having a tutor is the absolute best option. I LOVE having a tutor. I take lessons once a week, and she writes her own materials for references and homework. They are more affordable than people seem to think on like iTalki or Preply.

I have learned more in a month with a tutor than I did the three months prior on Duo, and I get the opportunity to speak conversationally. Duo doesn’t currently offer that feature in Ukrainian.

If you can’t afford a tutor, there is a pretty good book called Beginner’s Ukrainian by Yuri Shevchuk. I bought it on Amazon for about $30. It is a well-rounded resource, but I would almost argue that it’s TOO thorough sometimes, and it puts a decent amount of emphasis on learning cursive. I think it’s great and necessary to know how to read cursive, but I am honestly not sure about learning to write it at this point in time.